SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINSSEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Social and Religious
By
GEORGE AARON BARTON
Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages in the University of Pennsylvania ; Director of the American School of Oriental Research in Baghdad; Professor of New Testament Literature and Language in the Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
We can do, clothing against the truth, hut for the truth.
2 cor. 13 :8
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
Philadelphia
London: Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press
1934Copyright 1934
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
Manufactured in the United States of AmericaTHE GRADUATE STUDENTS
who during more than forty years have shared the studies of my seminaries this volume is affectionately inscribed.PREFACE
ST. AUGUSTINE in his old age found that he had changed his mind concerning so many matters, on which he had expressed opinions in his books, that he issued a volume of “Retractions.” The writer, unlike the Saint in most respects, resembles him in one. Thirty-two years ago he published A Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and Religious. In the preface to that work, which represented a dozen years of research, he said, “I could no longer doubt that these studies had led me to the discovery of the path trodden by the Semites in the journey from savagery to civilization, in the course of which the most characteristic features of their social and religious life were created.” After thirty years more of continuous research in the field he has again put together the results of his studies, having compassed a more extensive area for the sake of securing more numerous points of contact. Now that the results are amassed, correlated, and the deductions made, he finds that he has abandoned most of the important theories which he advocated thirty years ago. A reader of that work might well consider the present volume a book of “retractions.” Then he believed that the Semites had all passed through a polyandrous stage of social organization which had left its mark on many of their social and religious institutions; now he is convinced that, while a few of them practised fraternal polyandry, this type of marriage was not primitive, was due to local causes, and had comparatively little influence. Then he believed that sexual rites in Semitic ritual were survivals of practices associated with polyandry; now he believes that they were products of a kind of sympathetic magic whereby it was believed the deities of fertility could be influenced to perform the life-giving acts on which economic prosperity depended. Then he believed that all Semites had passed through a stage of totemistic culture; now he believes that he can show that, after their separation from the Hamites, they were not totemistic. Then he thought that many Semitic gods had, as society changed from a matriarchal to a patriarchal organization, been called into being by changing
viiSEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
viii
the sex of a mother goddess; now, while still convinced that some gods are metamorphosed goddesses, he is convinced that such transformations are much less common than he formerly supposed, and were due to other causes than a change in social organization. Then he conceived of each of the Semitic peoples as offshoots of a primitive Semitic stock, whose differences had been produced by long development in their separate and isolated habitats, but most of whom had retained without intermixture a pure Semitic blood; now he recognizes that each Semitic people, except possibly the North Arabs, has been formed by fusion in a melting pot with other races, and that their differing characteristics are often due more to intermixture than to simple development.
Perhaps, in view of these changes of opinion, some readers may consider it not worth while to read the pages which follow. Is there any guarantee that the opinions here expressed are nearer the truth than those put forth thirty years ago? Any who so question cannot be aware that in science opinions and theories are never final; they are always subject to change as facts previously unknown come to light. The worker who, under such circumstances, refuses to change his opinions ceases to be a scientist. In physics many of the theories which were thought to be well established thirty years ago have been entirely displaced, and the theory of matter, now held on the basis of convincing evidence, was undreamed of then. The writer ventures therefore to hope that the openness of mind which has led him, as knowledge has increased, to replace theories ardently embraced in youth by others, more in accord with facts now known, will commend his present work to thoughtful readers.
The writer believes that the principles on which he has now investigated the interesting problems studied are sound (i.e., they are the best that, in the present state of our knowledge, can be formulated); he does not deceive himself by thinking that they are final. The further back we attempt to push our knowledge, the fewer the facts at our disposal become. Theories necessarily become hypothesis or personal opinions rather than fully demonstrated steps in the progress of civilization. Such theories are by no means useless, since they serve as a motive for collecting facts and coordinating them until, having served as platforms for the investigator, they are demolished to make way for other platforms nearer thePREFACE
IX
truth. Many of the theories in this book are of that tentative character. Some readers will, perhaps, regard them as no more than personal opinions of the writer. Of these the writer would say, as Professor Kurt Sethe has recently said of a work of his own, “Wer es nicht glauben will, mag es nicht glauben.”
In a work like the present the writer is indebted to all his predecessors. To most of these acknowledgment of indebtedness is made in the footnotes. Especial thanks are due, however, to President Julian Morgenstern of Hebrew Union College for the loan of an unpublished manuscript containing a large amount of data relating to the social organization of the Semites; to Professor Nathaniel Reich, of Dropsie College, for reading and criticising the first draft of the chapter on ‘Egyptian Religious Origins,” and to my pupils, Dr. Henry S. Gehman, of Princeton University and Mr. Zellig S. Harris. The former compiled the table of Semitic and Hamitic grammatical forms published in the Appendix, and the latter has carefully read the work in manuscript and has made numerous criticisms and suggestions. Thanks are also due to my wife for invaluable aid in reading the proofs and making the indices.
I repeat here the words with which the preface of Semitic Origins concluded: “I cease work upon the volume, conscious of many imperfections in it, but with the hope that it may contribute a little to the knowledge of its great theme.”
Philadelphia,	G. A. B.
December, 1933.CONTENTS
CHAPTER	PAGE
I.	The Hamites and Semites.......................... 1
Opinions as to the Cradle Land of the Semites; as to the Cradle Land of the Hamites; Kinship of the Semitic and Hamitic Languages; Linguistic Evidence establishes Kinship; North Africa, not Arabia, the Cradle Land of the Parent Stock; Parents of Semites migrated to South Arabia; South Arabia the Semitic Cradle Land; North Arabs developed their Elaborate Arabic Grammatical System; no special North Semitic Cradle Land; the Evidence of Ethnology.
II.	The Neighbors oe the Hamites and Semites......... 33
The Elamites: the Sumerians; the Hurri and Mitanni; the Hittites and their Neighbors; the Stone Age Men of Palestine; the Early Cretans.
III.	The Composition oe the Semitic and Hamitic
Peoples.......................................... 55
The Arabs; South Arabians; the Babylonians; the Amorites; the Assyrians; the Canaanites; the Aramaeans; the Hebrews; the Egyptians.
IV.	Early Semitic and Hamitic Social Life.............. 95
Sociological Theories of Thirty Years ago and Now; Polyandry; the Levirate; Beena and Mot‘a Marriage; Mohammedan Marriage; Matrilineal Descent; Early Hamitic Social Organization; Proof that Matrilineal Descent does not presuppose Polyandry; the Magical Origin of Religious Sexual Customs; Semitic Polyandry not Primitive; Hamites Totemistic, Semites not; Primitive Semitic Economic Life.
V.	Religious Origins................................. 120
Primitive Animism; Religion of the Badarian Civilization in Egypt; Egyptian Totemism; Semites non-Totemistic; Emergence of Gods; the Many Deities of
XIXll
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
CHAPTER	PAGE
the Pyramid Texts; the Numerous Gods of Surippak; Tree-Worship; Sacredness of Palm-Trees; Primitive Semitic Tree Deities—Asherat-Isis-Osiris; Primitive Semitic Spring Deities—Athtar-Ishtar-Ashtart; Originally the Tree Feminine, the Spring Masculine; the Tree in the Biblical Paradise-story; Circumcision; Sacredness of Thresholds; Pillars, Menhirs, Gilgals, and Obelisks; Primitive Semitic Festivals.
VI.	Egyptian Religious Origins....................... 164
Difficulties of the Subject; Emergence of the Egyptian Nomes; Oldest Gods Pictured as Idols, not as Living Animals; Horus the Living Hawk; Hathor, “She-of-the-Lofty-Temple”; Detailed Study of the Nomes of Upper Egypt; Detailed Study of the Nomes of Lower Egypt; Summary of Results; Egyptian Religious Festivals.
VII.	South Semitic Religious Origins.................. 200
Athtar, the Masculine Spirit of the Spring; Physical Features of Yemen; Historical Sources of Information; Nielsen’s Theory of Arabian Deities; Chthonic Deities Earlier than Celestial; the Minaean Triad—Athtar, Wadd, andNakrakh; the Sabaean Triad—Al-maqqahu, Athtar, and Shams; Other Sabaean Deities; Qatabanian Deities; the Qatabanian Triad—Athtar, ‘Amm, and Shams; the Bi-sexuality of Athtar; the Deities of El-Ula; Thamudic Deities; Safaite Deities; Other Pre-Mohammedan Deities; the Deities of Mecca; Semites in Abyssinia; Religious Monuments at Aksum; the Triad of Aksum—Astar, Barras, and Medr.
VIII.	Babylonian Religious Origins .................... 226
Racial Contributions here the Most Difficult of our Problems; Ishtar clearly a Semitic Goddess; Ninkhursag the Sumerian Mother-Goddess; Enlil and Enki Gods of the Central Asiatic Race; Semitic Goddess Ashdar became Ishtar; Sumerians called her En-nin—“The Lord-lady” ;Bi-sexual as in Arabia; Dumuzi; Enzu-Nan-nar-Sin; Utu-Shamash; Anu; Adad; Gods of Lagash—CONTENTS
CHAPTER	PAGE
Ningirsu, Bau, Gal-alim; Dunshagga; Ningishzida; these Gods of the Sumerian Settlement, Girsu; Nina, Goddess of Central Asiatic Settlement, Nina; Ninmar; Erim, a Semitic Settlement; En-nin its Goddess; Gods of Umma; Zamama of Kish; Ninshubur, the Swine-goddess; Ne-unugal-Nergal; Ninshar; Ninsun; Nin-Ib (urta); Nusku; Nin-insiana; Marduk and Zarpanit; Nabu and Tashmit; Ashur; Ishtar of Nineveh; Babylonian Religious Festivals.
IX. West Semitic Religious Origins..................... 283
Amorite Deities—Asherat and ‘Amm; Adda; El and Baalath of Gebal; Gods of the Ras Shamra Texts—El, Asherat, Ashtar; Alein, the Tree-God; ‘Anat; Shephesh, sun-goddess; Dagan; Moth; Iadud; Resheph; Later Cult at Gebal; Adonis; El-Hamon arid Malak-Ashtart; Melqart and Ashtart at Tyre; Ashtart and Eshmun at Sidon; Phoenician Cults in Cyprus; in Malta; in Sicily; Tanith, Baal, and Ashtart at Carthage; Baals and Ash-taroth in Palestine; El in Palestine; Shemesh in Palestine; Mekal at Bethshan; Aramaean Deities; Deities of Kilamu; Gods of Panamu and Bar-Rekub—Hadad, El, Resheph, Rekeb-el, and Shemesh, Atar-samak at Kethek; Deities of Nerab; El-war of Hamath; Hadad at Damascus; Deities of the Nabathaeans—Atar, Salm, Shingala, and Ashira; of El-Hegra—Dushara, Manu-thu, Qaisa, Alilat; at Petra; at Palmyra; Atargatis; at Hierapolis (Mabug)—Hadad, Atar-‘atah, Shemesh, Resheph, Ashtar, Adonis, Atar; at Baalbek; West Semitic Religious Festivals.
X. Yahweh............................................ 323
Problem of Hebrew Origins: Recent Discussions; Theory of the Elohist; Amorites of the Abrahamic Traditions worshipped El and Asherat; Name Yawi known; Tribe of Gad worshipped Gad; Moses introduced worship of Yahweh from Kenites; Habiri, the Bne Israel, settled in Palestine in Fourteenth Century; only Few Hebrews in Egypt; Mystic Experience ofXIV
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
CHAPTER	PAGE
Moses; Nature of Yahweh and Meaning of his Name; pre-Mosaic History of Yahweh; Basis of Covenant with the Egyptian Fugitives; Circumcision in the Time of Moses; Implements of the Cult in Moses’ Time; Settlement of the Egyptian Fugitives in Palestine; how Yahweh became the God of the Whole Nation ; the Yahwehi-zation of Baal; the Work of Elijah; of the Eighth Century Prophets; the Reform of Josiah; Jeremiah; Ezekiel
and P complete the Work.
Epilogue........................................... 357
Additional Note.................................... 361
Addenda............................................ 365
Index of Scripture References...................   371
Index of Authors.................................. 375
Index of Subjects.................................. 383
Tables. A Comparative Table of the Personal Pronouns in the Hamitic, Egyptian, and Semitic Languages. Arranged linguistically and geographically; A Comparative Table of the Verb Forms, etc......................inside back coverABBREVIATIONS
AJSL.
BA.
BE.
BSGW.
CIS.
CT.
DP
HLC.
JAOS.
JBL.
KAJI.
KAVI.
KAT3.
KB.
Nik.
OBI.
OBW.
OLZ
PSBA.
American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures.
Beiträge zur Assyriologie und semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, herausgegeben von Friedrich Delitzsch und Paul Haupt.
Babylonian* Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania,
Series A, Cuneiform Texts, edited by H. V. Hilprecht.
Berichte der könig. sachs. Gesellschaft zu Wissenschaften.
Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum.
Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum.
Allotte de la Fuye, Documentes presargoniques.
Haver ford Library Collection of Cuneiform Tablets or Documents from the Temple Archives of Telloh, Edited by George A. Barton.
Journal of the American Oriental Society.
Journal of Biblical Literature.
Keilschrifttexte aus Ashur, juristische Inhalts, autogra-phirt von E. Ebeling, Leipzig, 1927.
Keilschrifttexte aus Ashur, Verschiedenen Inhalts, auto-graphirt von Otto Schrader, Leipzig, 1920.
Keilinschriften und das alte Testament, von E. Schrader, 3te Auf. herausgegeben von H. Winckler und Heinrich Zimmern, 1903.
Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, herausgegeben von E. Schrader.
Nikolsky’s publication in Russian of the Documents of Likhatchef’s collection.
Volume I of BE above.
The Origin and Development of Babylonian Writing by George A. Barton, Leipzig, 1913. (Vol. IX of BA above.)
Orientalistische Literaturzeitung.
Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. London.
XVXVI
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Petermann’s Mittheilungen. Mittheilungen aus Justes Perles geographischer Anstalt wichtige neue Erforschungen auf dem gesammelt Gebiete der Geographie, von A. Petermann.
JRAS. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London.
PSBM. Publications of the Babylonian Section of the University Museum, Philadelphia.
R	The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia edited by
Henry Rawlinson, I R., II R., Vols. I, II, etc. of the same IV2 R., 2d ed. of Vol. IV of the same revised by Theophilus G. Pinches.
RISA. The Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad by George A. Barton, New Haven, 1929.
SAK F. Thureau-Dangin, Sumerischen und Akkadischen Königsenschriften, Leipzig, 1907.
SBOT. The Sacred Books of the Old Testament, edited by Paul Haupt.
SO	A Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and Religious, by George
A. Barton, New York, 1902.
TSA.	Genouillac, Tablettes sumériennes archaïques.
TSBA.	Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, London.
ZA.	Zeitschrift für	Assyriologie.
ZATW	Zeitschrift für	alttestamentliche Wissenschaft.
ZDMG.	Zeitschrift der	deutschen Morganländischen Gesellschaft.I
THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
THE names Hamite and Semite are taken from the table of the nations in the tenth chapter of Genesis, the Hamites corresponding roughly with the nations there said to be descended from Ham and the Semites, to those from Shem. Neither name is altogether appropriate. The classification of Genesis was apparently based on political rather than racial connections, and is, from the scientific point of view, inaccurate. Thus Canaan is there said to be descended from Ham, though linguistic and other evidence indicates that the Canaanites were Semites. Similarly Cush (Nubia) is said to be Hamitic, whereas it was Negroid, and of quite a different race. Put (the Punt of Egyptian inscriptions) is said to be Hamitic. If it lay, as seems probable, on both sides of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, the classification is true for the African part of it, but not for the Arabian portion. However, the names Hamite and Semite as employed by scholars are now well understood, and may be used without confusion. The term Hamite covers the ancient Egyptians and their descendants, the Copts, the pre-Arabian Lybians and Berbers of North Africa, certain tribes of Abyssinia and Somali Land, and some other tribes to be named later. The Semites include the Arabs, the Akkadians of ancient Babylonia, the Assyrians, the Amorites, the Canaanites and their descendants the Phoenicians and their colonies, the Hebrews, Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites, together with the various tribes of Aramaeans; also a considerable portion of the population of Abyssinia. It is the aim of the present volume to discuss the origin and distribution of these peoples, and the rise of certain of their fundamental institutions.
In approaching a study of the origins of any people, it is necessary, first of all, to ask: Where did this people take its rise? Where was it differentiated from other races, and in what environment of climate and soil were its early institutions born? Man, like all other creatures, is profoundly influenced by his surroundings. The sturdy character of the Anglo-Saxon, though for a time it may sur-
12
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
vive in the tropics, is not created there; nor has the careless laziness of the negro been bred in the arctic north. To understand the earliest religious conceptions of a group of peoples, we must study the social organization in which they had their birth; and to form a correct theory of their social organization, it is necessary to study their physical environment.
Our inquiry is, however, beset at the very threshold with grave difficulties. The evidence with which we have to deal is very slight, and is differently interpreted by different scholars. In many respects authorities differ widely. In recent years five different theories as to the location of the cradle-land of the Semitic peoples have been put forth, in which Babylonia, Arabia, North Africa, Amurru, and Armenia have been respectively made the home of these peoples. Opinions as to the cradle-land of the Hamites do not differ so widely; there seems to be a fair consensus of opinion that they originated in North Africa or the Sahara Desert, though this opinion is contested by some. It will be convenient to review first the theories of the Semitic cradle-land.
1. The advocates of the Babylonian theory have been von Kremer, Guidi, and Hommel. Von Kremer set forth his views in two articles published in 1875 in Das Ausland.1 He reached his results from a comparison of the vocabularies of the different Semitic tongues. He concluded that before the formation of the different Semitic dialects, they had a name for the camel which appears in all of them; whereas they had no common names for the date-palm and its fruit or for the ostrich. The camel the Semites knew while they were yet one people, dwelling together; the date-palm and ostrich they did not know. Now the region where there is neither date-palm nor ostrich, and yet where the camel has been known from remotest antiquity, is the great central table-land of Asia, near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers, the Jaihun and Saihun. Von Kremer thought the Semitic emigration from this region preceded the Aryan and Indo-European, perhaps under pressure from the last-mentioned races; and he held that the Semites first settled in Mesopotamia and Babylonia, which he looked upon as the oldest Semitic center of civilization.
1 The article was entitled “Semitische Culturenentlehnungen aus Pflanzen und Thierreiche,” and was published in Das Ausland, Vol. IV, Nos. 1 and 2.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
3
Similarly the Italian Orientalist, Ignazio Guidi, wrote in 1879 a memoir on the primitive seat of the Semitic peoples, which appeared among the publications of the Reale Academia dei Lincei.1 His line of argument and conclusions are similar to those of von Kremer. His method of induction appears to have been somewhat broader than von Kremer’s, whose work seems to have been unknown to him. He took into consideration the words in the various Semitic languages which denote the configuration of the earth’s surface, the varieties of soil, the changes of the seasons and climate, and the names of minerals and animals. He concluded that Babylonia was the first center of Semitic life, and that the primitive Semites in Babylonia were immigrants from the lands south and southwest of the Caspian Sea. This conclusion Driver, in the second edition of his Use of the Tenses in Hebrew,2 was inclined to accept.
Not radically different from this is the view of Hommel, also first published in 1879. Like Guidi, he holds that lower Mesopotamia, i.e., Babylonia, and not upper Mesopotamia on the one hand nor Arabia on the other, was the home of the primitive Semitic people.3 This view was accepted by Vlock in the article “Semiten” in Herzog’s Real-Encyclopedie.4 Hommel later shifted the primitive home to upper Mesopotamia, and held that it was the home of these people before the separation of the Hamites and Semites, or, at least, from the Egyptian branch of the stock.5 More recently he has reverted to his original theory.6 Egypt was, he thinks, colonized from Babylonia, so that the civilization of the former country was derived from that of the latter.7
1	The title of Guidi’s paper is “Della sede primitiva dei popoli Semitic!” The above account of it is drawn from Wrights Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages, p. 5.
2	Cf. p. 250n.
3	See his Die Namen des Säugthiere hei den südsemitischen Völkern, Leipsig, 1879 p. 406 ff.; and Die semitischen Völkern und Sprachen, I, 1881, p. 63.
4	For a translation of Vlock’s article, see Hebraica} II, 147 ff.
5	See his article “Ueber der Grad der Verwandtschaft des Altägyptischen mit dem Semitischen,” Beitrage zur Assyriologie, II, 343 ff.
6	See his Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients, zweite Hälfte, München, 1926, p. 506 n4.
7	See his “Identität der ältesten babylonischen und ägyptischen Gottergenealogie und der babylonischen Ursprung der ägyptischen Kultur,” Transactions of the International Congress of Orientalists, London, 1892, pp. 218-244, his article “Babylonia,” Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1898, and his Grundriss as cited in the preceding note.4
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
This linguistic method of investigation is, however, precarious. As Noldeke has pointed out, the fact that one word now denotes an object in all the Semitic languages, may be due to borrowing from one tongue by another in remote centuries, the causes of which we cannot now trace, while the fact that a word is not common to all the languages of the group may not necessarily signify that the primitive Semites were ignorant of the object which it connotes, but may be due to the displacement of the term by another under circumstances which now escape us.1
2. Opposed to the view that Mesopotamia is the cradle of the Semites, is the view that Arabia was the primitive home. This theory was defended by A. Sprenger in 18612 and was afterward reaffirmed by him. He regarded it as a historical law that agriculturists do not become nomads, and declares that he would as soon think that the dolphin formerly dwelt in the heights of the Alps, or the goat in the sea, as to think that mountaineers would become nomadic. Then, after describing the Nafud and other features of central Arabia, he concludes: “It is of no importance whether the inhabitants are autochthones or are from other neighboring tribes, the Nejd is the fastness of the above-mentioned lands (Syria and Mesopotamia), which has impressed its character upon the Semites.”3 In like manner in his later work he says: “All Semites are, according to my conviction, successive layers of Arabs. They deposited themselves layer on layer; and who knows, for example, how many layers had preceded the Canaanites whom we encounter at the very beginning of history?”4
Sayce also, in 1872,5 declared: “The Semitic traditions all point to Arabia as the original home of the race. It is the only part of
1	Nöldeke, Semitischen Sprachen, Leipsig, 1887, p. 3 ff. (2nd ed. 1899), and his article “Semitic Languages” in the Encyclopxdia Britannien, 9th ed.
2	See his Das Lehen und Lehre des Mohamm>ad, Berlin, 1861, I, 241 ff., also his Alte Geographie Arabiens, 1875, p. 93.
3	“Gleichveil ob die Einwohner Aütochthonen sind oder aus andern gegenden Stammen, das Nejd ist die Veste jener Länder, welche den Semiten ihren Charakter aufgedruckt haben,” Lehen und Lehre des Mohammad, I, 242, 243.
4	“Alle Semiten sind nach meiner Ueberzeugung abgelagerte Araber. Sie lagerte sich Schichte auf Schichte, und wer weiss, die wievielte Schichte zum Beispiel die Kanaaniter, welche wir au Anfang der Geschichte, wahrnehmen, waren.” Alte Geog. Arabiens, p. 293.
h Assyriern Grammar, p.13.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
5
the world which has remained exclusively Semitic.” The racial characteristics—intensity of faith, ferocity, exclusiveness, imagination—can best be explained, he thinks, by a desert origin.
Eberhard Schrader, in 1873,1 expressed views of the same nature. As a result of a long examination of the religious, linguistic, and his-torico-geographical relations of the Semitic nations to one another, he concludes that Arabia is the cradle of these peoples.
De Goeje also, in his academical address for 1882,2 declared himself in favor of the view that central Arabia is the home of the Semitic race as a whole. Like Sprenger, he lays it down as a rule that mountaineers never become inhabitants of the steppe and nomadic shepherds, and so rejects the notion that Semites can have descended from the mountains of Arrapachitis to become dwellers of the plains and swamps of Babylonia. He shows, in contrast, how nomads are constantly passing over into agriculturists with settled habitations; how villages and towns are gradually formed, with cultivated lands around them; and how the space needful for the pastureland of the nomad is gradually curtailed until, for want of land, he is compelled to go elsewhere. So it was, he held, in central Arabia; and, as a result, its nomadic population was continually overstepping bounds in every direction and planting itself in Oman, Yemen, Syria, and Babylonia.
Wright, whose account of De Goeje’s work I have largely reproduced, after giving a resume of the argument, observes3 that this process has been repeated in historical times, in which Arabic emigration has flooded Syria and Mesopotamia. He therefore accepts the view that Arabia is the cradle-land of the Semitic race. Hubert Grimme, writing in 1904,4 also assumed that Arabia was their cradle-land. Similarly Carl Brockelmann in 1908 declared5 Arabia the cradle-land of the Semitic peoples, observing that where the race came from before it was in Arabia, it is useless to inquire. The late L. W. King also wrote in 1915,6 “It is now generally recog-
1	See his article, “Die Abstammung der Chaldaer und die Ursitz der Semiten,” ZDMG, XXVII, 397-424, especially p. 420 ff.
2	Het Vaderland der semitische Volken.
3	Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages, p. 8.
4	Mohammed, Weltgeschichte in Karakterbildern, 1904, pp. 6-8.
5	Vergleichende Grammatik der semitischen Sprache, Berlin, 1908, I, 2.
6	History of Sumer and Akkad, London, 1915, p. 119.6
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
nized that the Arabian peninsula was the first home or cradle of the Semitic peoples.” This was also assumed by F. Schuhlein in 1912.1 John L. Meyers, writing in 1923,2 assumes that the Semitic peoples have been distributed from Arabia as their original home, while S. A. Cook refers3 to the hypothesis of their Arabian origin as a brilliant theory and the prevailing one. Ditlef Nielsen also says, “probably the original homeland of the Semites is to be sought in Arabia.”4
3. Still another theory, which, as will appear later, is in some respects a modification of the foregoing, is that the earliest home of the Semites is to be found in Africa. Thus Palgrave held5 that the strong racial resemblances between the Arabs, Abyssinians, Berbers, etc.—especially the form of the jaw and the small calf of the leg— together with their social affinity and linguistic similarity, lead to the view that the pure Semites of the peninsula originally came from an African rather than an Asiatic direction.
Similarly, Gerland reached, on the basis of physical resemblances, such as the formation of the skull, and on linguistic grounds, the conclusion that all the Asiatic Semities can be traced in their beginnings to the North African regions. Gerland’s view is in some respects peculiar. He held to the racial unity of the African races, and regards the Semites as one of them. The Hamites and Semites were to him one people, and even the Bantus are, he thought, related to them.6 More recent investigators have recognized the facts on which this view was based and have given it what seems to be the right explanation.
In 1882 G. Bertin also advocated the theory that the Semites and Hamites originated together in Africa, that the Semites crossed into Arabia via Suez, and developed their special characteristics in Arabia Petra.7
1	See the article “Semites” in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
2	Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge, 1923, I, 38.
3	Cambridge Ancient History, I, 192 f.
4	Handbuch der altarabischen Altertumskunde, I, Kopenhagen, Paris, Leipzig, 1927, p. 55. Cf. also p. 47.
5	Article “Arabia,” Encyc. Brit. 9th ed.
6	See his exhaustive article “Ethnography” in the I conographic Encyc. Vol. I, which is a translation of the author’s German work on the same subject. He holds that sporadic traces of prognathism and woolly hair among the Semites is an argument in favor of his view (cf. pp. 369, 370)
7	Journal of the Anthropological Institute, XI, 431 ff.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
7
Noldeke, too, in 1887,1 accepted the same view; but he put it forth not as a fixed theory, but as a modest hypothesis. Brinton, in 1890,2 also championed this hypothesis. He attempted to localize, somewhat more specifically, the place in North Africa whence the progenitors of the Semites migrated. He argued that the popular tradition, comparative philology, ethnology, and archaeology, all point to “those picturesque valleys of the Atlas which look forth to the Great Ocean and the setting sun.” His argument from tradition is based on a passage in the early chapters of Genesis, and is, as will be pointed out below, irrelevant; but his philological and ethnological arguments were valid, as will be shown in the proper place.
The late Morris Jastrow, Jr., in a paper published under the same cover as Brinton’s,3 accepted the African origin of the Semites, although he rightly rejected Brinton’s special locality in the African northwest as unsupported by the evidence.
Likewise A. H. Keane,4 who regarded Mauritania as the original home and center of dispersion, not of the Hamites and Semites only, but of the whole Caucasian race, naturally held that the Semites were of African origin. In a later work5 he regarded South Arabia as the earliest home of the Semites after their migration from African soil, and therefore their point of departure for their several national homes. Ripley, after reviewing the various opinions, concluded that “the physical traits of the Arabs fully corroborate Brinton’s and Jastrow’s hypothesis of African descent.”6
This theory, that the primitive Semitic home was in Africa, is, as the late W. Robertson Smith pointed out,7 not inconsistent with the theory that Arabia was their earliest Asiatic home, and the point from which they dispersed. If they originated in Africa, the arguments that the Arabian peninsula was their cradle-land after their
1	Die semitischen Sprache, p. 9; also his article “Semitic Languages,” Encyc. Brit. 9th ed. and 11th ed., 1911.
2 See his Cradle of the Semites, Philadelphia, 1890; also his Races and Peoples, New York, 1890, p. 132.
3	Cradle of the Semites, p. 13.
4	Ethnology, Cambridge, 1896, p. 302.
6 Man Past and Present, 1899, p. 490.
6	The Races of Europe, New York, 1899, p. 376.
7	Wright’s Comparative Semitic Grammar, p. 9n.8
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
migration from the neighboring continent are, in a good degree, reinforced.
Nathaniel Schmidt suggested in a paper read at the Congress of Religions in Paris in 1900, that the Semites may have entered Arabia originally from Pauint (Punt)—Abyssinia and Somali-land—and that they lived in Arabia long enough to have received their special characteristics from its environment. As will be pointed out below, the available evidence accumulated during the last quarter of a century makes this the most probable view.
The view of Streck, that the Semitic cradle-land was in Africa, based on the theory of the antiquity of the labializing gutturals in Abyssinian, has not met with favor.1 Of the truth of the theory of the African origin and Arabian cradle-land of the Semites, the present writer has been fully persuaded for many years and has advocated the view in numerous publications.2
4.	In 1919 the late Professor John P. Peters3 registered his objections to the theory that Arabia was the original home of the Semites, and revived a theory, formerly urged by some, that that home was ancient Armenia, eastern Asia Minor and the country between the Taurus and the Euphrates. The chief reason advanced in support of this view was that it best accords with the Biblical traditions of the flood, and that the Armenians and ancient Hittites possessed aquiline noses resembling those of the Jews, whereas this feature is not a characteristic of the Arabs. The observation is in itself correct, but is not a sufficient basis on which to build so large a theory. As will be pointed out later, it is capable of quite a different explanation.
5.	Still another theory was advocated by the late Professor A. T. Clay,4 who found the theory of the Arabian origin of the Semites in-
1	See Klio, VI, 185.
2	A Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and Religious, New York, 1902, ch. I; the articles “Semites” and “Semitic Languages” in Hastings’s Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics; article “Israel” in Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible in One Volume; “Yahweh before Moses” in Studies in the History of Religions Presented to Crawford Howell Toy by Pupils, Colleagues, and Friends, New York, 1912; The Religion of Israel, New York, 1918, p. 3: Religions of the World, Chicago, 1917, 1919, p. 18; Archaeology and the Bible, 4th ed., 1925, p. 539 f.; and JAOS, Vol. XLV, 1925, p. 1.
3	JAOS, XXXIX, 243-260.
4	See Amurru, the Home of the Northern Semites, Philadelphia, 1909; Yale Oriental Series—Babylonian Texts, Vol. I, New Haven, 1915, v f.; The Empire of the Amorites, New Haven, 1919.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
9
capable of explaining how the dolichocephalic Arabs could be the progenitors of the round-headed Jews, and who believed that the Amo-rites were the builders and maintainers of an extensive empire in the fourth and fifth millennia B.C. Amurru, in his opinion included northern Syria and the Euphrates region down to a point nearly opposite Baghdad. This region he thought was the original home of the Semites. He never actually said that it was the region where they originated, but he believed that it was the center from which they were distributed. The theory was supported by arguments that were largely philological, and, so far as the present writer knows, never convinced anyone except their own author of the correctness of the theory.
Of the origin of the Hamites, theories have not been so abundant: there are, however, one or two that are outstanding. 1. Robert Hartmann, in 1879,1 held that the Africans were an ethnic whole. He thought of the African continent as “a grand uniform physical creation,” which “hid in itself a great unitary stock” of people. He maintained that a traveler, ascending the Nile, could not tell where the straight-haired Egyptians left off and the curly-haired Negroes began. As von Luschan remarks, “such a standpoint appears today really wonderful and scarcely to be conceived.”2
2. Most scholars who have expressed an opinion upon the subject have assumed that the Hamites developed in North Africa out of the Mediterranean race, after the last glacial epoch. This theory has received the endorsement of such ethnologists as Keane,3 Brinton,4 Sergi,5 Gerland,6 Ripley,7 and von Luschan,8 and is accepted by philologists, such as Maspero,9 the late W. Max Müller,10 Meinhoff,11
1	Die Völker Afrikas, Leipzig, 1879.
2	In Meinhoff’s Die Sprachen der Hamiten, Hamburg, 1912, p. 242. For further remarks of von Luschan on the Hamites as a race, cf. his Völker, Rassen, Sprachen, Berlin, 1922, p. 47 f.
3	Ethnology, 1896, p. 392, and Man Past and Present, 1899, p. 490.
4	Cradle of the Semites, Philadelphia, 1890, and Races and Peoples, New York, 1890.
5	The Mediterranean Race, New York, 1901, pp. 90-100.
6	“Ethnography” in Iconographic Encyclopedia, Vol. I.
7	Ripley, The Races of Europe, New York, 1899, p. 376.
8	“Beigabe 2” in Meinhoff’s Die Sprachen der Semiten, Hamburg, 1912.
9	Histoire ancienne des peuples de VOrient classique, I, 45.
10	The article “Hamites” in Encyc. Brit., 11th ed.
11	Meinhoff, Die Sprachen der Hamiten.10
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
and Worrell.1 A slight variant of the theory is presented by the view of Alexander Scharff and others, that the Hamites migrated into North Africa from southern Spain.2 This view is based partly on archaeological and partly on linguistic considerations.
It will appear, as we proceed, that this North African hypothesis best explains all the facts at present known to us, and is probably true.
3. The veteran Egyptologist, Adolf Erman, formerly expressed his conviction3 that the so-called Hamitic race is simply Semites who migrated into Africa from southern Arabia, and who have been corrupted by various admixtures of African blood. The migration, according to Erman, was in two streams, one to Egypt and North Africa, and one to East Africa. Nubia, being a poor country, had nothing, he thinks, to attract the Semitic settlers.
Before concluding this survey of theories, it should be noted that scholars are not altogether agreed as to whether the ancient Egyptians should be classed with the Hamites or the Semites. The late Friedrich Müller had no hesitation in classing them with the Hamites,4 and, while the late W. Max Müller5 did the same, he recognized that there were features of the Egyptian language which seemed to make it stand apart. Others have, however, taken a different view. Thus Wiedemann held that the autochthones of ancient Egypt were a race kindred to the Lybians, and that the Egyptians of the historical period came into the country from Arabia6—an opinion which de Morgan shared.7
Erman, in accordance with his view of the origin of the Hamites
1	Study of Races in the Ancient Near East, New York, 1927, p. 79 ff.
2	Cf. A. Scharff, Grundzüge der aegyptischen Vorgeschichte, p. 23, and Pokornky and Bosch-Gimpera in the Reallexikon d. Vorgeschichte, VI, pp. 4-6.
3	See his article “Die Flexion des ägyptischen Verbums,, in Sitzungsberichte der kg. Ak.d Wiss. zu Berlin, 1900, pp. 317-353, especially pp. 350-353. In later publications he recognizes that the Semitic and Hamitic languages sprang from the same source and leaves the matter there. See his Ägyptische Grammatik, 3te Auf., 1911, 1-4, and 4te Auf., 1928, 1.
4	See his Reise der österreichen Fregatta Novara, p. 51, and his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaften, Wien, 1884, Vol. Ill, pt. 2, p. 226.
5	Article “Hamites” in Encyc. Brit., 11th ed.
6	See de Morgan’s Recherches sur les origines de V Egypte, 1897, II, 219, 222, and 228.
7	Ibid. I, 196, and II, 52, 53. See also his posthumous La Préhistoire orientale, Paris, II, 1926, ch. vi, especially p. 338.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
11
already stated, held that the Egyptian people of history were formed by the settlement in Upper Egypt of Semites, who found an African race already in the Nile Valley, with whom they mingled, in time absorbing them.1 Breasted concurs in this view.2 Finally Behnk has suggested3 that, if the Semitic languages are regarded as a closely related group, comparable to the Romanic languages; and the Ham-itic languages, also as a closely related group, comparable to the Germanic languages, Egyptian is somewhat isolated from both groups and is comparable to Celtic. On this view of the Egyptian language, one would expect the origin of the Egyptian people to have been somewhat different from either the Hamites or the Semites. As will appear in the sequel, there is an element of truth in these remarks, though the analogy suggested with Celtic is not a happy one.
This review of scholarly opinion reveals the fact that there is a preponderating weight of opinion in favor of regarding Arabia as the cradle-land of the Semitic peoples and also in favor of believing that the Hamites originated in North Africa. Whether the Hamites and Semites are originally of the same race, and, if so, whether the Semites were early emigrants from Africa, or whether the Hamites are Semitized Africans—on this question there is more difference of opinion. We now propose to examine the evidence, linguistic and anthropologic, on these problems, with a view, if we cannot solve them, of at least ascertaining what the most probable hypothesis may be.
THE HAMITIC PEOPLES
It will conduce to clearness to begin with a discussion of the Hamitic languages, and to learn what we can of the present habitat and probable origin of the Hamitic peoples. There are Hamitic-speaking peoples north of the Sahara Desert—the Shilkhs, the Riffs, the Kabylees, the Tameshq; within the Sahara are the Tuareg; these peoples seem to be Hamites of purest blood. The ancient Egyptians, from whom the Copts were descended, were Hamites
1	In addition to the references on p. 10, see his Handbuch der ägyptischen Religion, 2te Auf., Berlin, 1905, p. 1.
2	History of Egypt, 2nd ed., New York, 1909, p. 25 f.
3	ZDMG, Vol. 82 (1928), 137 f.12
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
mixed with Semites, as will appear later. The Bedauye and Belin, between the Nubian Nile and the Red Sea, are Hamites mixed with Kushites or Nubians. The Saho, Irob-Saho, Afars, Somali, Galla, Chamir, and Kafa, of the horn of East Africa, are also Hamites fused with a Kushite stock. The Nandi, Norobo, Masai, and Mbulunge, of the African lake-region, are Hamites mingled with a Negroid stock.1 The Ful and Zenaga, on the southern border of the Sahara in Central and West Africa, are Hamites mingled with Negroids who spoke languages of the Sudanese type. Finally the Nama, in western South Africa, are Hamites mingled with Bushmen.2 Naturally these peoples differ from one another in many respects. Those that have mingled with Negroids are of much darker complexion than those who have lived always in the white man’s country north of the Sahara, or who in ancient Egypt mingled with Semites, and yet they possess certain physical characteristics in common, which ethnologists recognize. # Further, their languages possess in common certain features which identify them as belonging to the same family. Their personal pronouns are in general so nearly related as to appear to have been derived from the same originals; and pronouns are among the most sui generis of the parts of speech.3 4 They form intensives by doubling a letter or a root, causatives by the use of the letter s, reflexives by the use of the letter t, and passive-reflexives by the letter n, which, in some dialects, is philologically changed to r, in others to m.A They also differ from the other African languages in dividing all objects into two classes. Animate objects, large things, subjects, and males are of one gender, generally called masculine; inanimate things, small things, objects, and females, are of the other gender, usually called female.5 The sign of the masculine is w{u); the sign of feminine is t. They also possess in common a principle which Meinhoff
1	Cf. Felix v. Luschan in Meinhoff’s Sprachen der Hamiten, p. 248 f.
2	For the location of these peoples and the evidence that they are Hamites see the annotated map in Carl Meinhoff’s Die Sprachen der Hamiten, Hamburg, 1912, and, for the Tameshq, Friedrich Muller’s Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, Wien, 1884, Bd. Ill, 269 ff. On the mixture of Hamites with various peoples, compare W. H. Worrell, A Study of Races in the Near East, New York, 1927, p. 54.
3	See Table I, giving the Semitic and Hamitic pronouns.
4	See Table II, the verb-forms.
5	Cf. W. H. Worrell, op. cit.} p. 58 ff.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
13
has called “polarity”1—the tendency to arrange things in masculine and feminine pairs. For example, in Nama and Somali the plural of a musculine noun is feminine; in Somali the plural of a feminine noun is masculine. The Hamitic tongues possess also the characteristic of vowel-gradation (ablaut)2 something that is also characteristic both of the Semitic and Indo-European tongues. Thus in Indo-European Hittite we have enis, This’; annis, ‘that’ (near); unis, ‘that’ (remote). Another common trait of the Hamitic languages is the elision of a vowel in the body of a word and the modification of the following consonant in consequence.3 In spite of the great variety of word-material possessed by the Hamitic tongues, due to mingling with other races, Semitic, Kushite, and Negroid, there is still traceable a considerable number of roots which they possess in common.4 Two of these common features differentiate the Hamitic languages from all other native African languages—the division of all objects into two classes, and the elision of a vowel in the middle of a word.5 For example, the Bantu languages,6 which now form a large group, that spreads over much of Africa south of the Sudan, and which Meinhoff7 thinks were formed by blending elements of the Hamitic and Sudanese tongues, divide objects into many classes.
Notwithstanding the demonstrable kinship of the Hamitic languages, they also present much greater differences among themselves than are seen in the Semitic languages. The branches of this family of tongues which are found in East Africa have clearly borrowed elements from and have been modified by the Kushite languages of
1	See Meinhoff, Sprachen der Hamiten, p. 18 ff.; Worrell, op. cit., p. 60.
2	Cf. Meinhoff, op. cit., p. 13 f.; Worrell, op. cit., p. 47.
3	See Meinhoff, op. cit., p. 226.
4	The subject has never been exhaustively treated, but a considerable amount of material is presented in Meinhoff’s Sprachen der Hamiten, pp. 230-240. The brief article of Frida Behnk in ZDMG, 82, pp. 136-141 should be compared.
5	Meinhoff, op. cit.
6	On the Bantu and other African languages the following works may be consulted: W. H. I. Bleek, Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, London, 1862; R. Gust, The Modern Languages of Africa, London, 1883; Carl Meinhoff, An Introduction to the Study of African Languages, London, 1915; H. H. Johnston, A Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages, Oxford, 1922; and C. W. Hobley, Bantu Beliefs and Magic, London, 1922.
7	Meinhoff, op. cit., p. 226.14
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
their neighbors. Others, like the Ful and Zenaga, have as certainly been modified by the assimilation of elements from Sudanese speech; while Nama has as certainly been changed by contact with dialects of the Bushmen. It is also well established that Egyptian was modified by contact with Semites. Of all the Hamitic languages, those in and north of the Sahara Desert have preserved best what appears to have been the original Hamitic type. Here Hamites for many centuries came into less close contact with peoples of other races.
It seems to be an incontestable fact that the Hamites belonged to the white race. Their hair was straight and their skins white.1 They first appear in history in ancient Egypt, but in somatic type the Egyptians did not differ from other peoples of North Africa. The same type still persists across the whole of that continent from Abyssinia to the Canary Isles and forms the substratum of the population.2 Anthropologists have long called this the Mediterranean race.3 In late geologic time Europe and Africa were connected; the flora and fauna as well as the human type were the same both north and south of the Mediterranean Sea. This was true in Palaeolithic time, before the glacial epochs. De Morgan4 (and it is the view of other anthropologists5), holds that the palaeolithic civilization originated in North Africa and spread northward to Spain, France, and southern England. According to him, at the break-up of the glacial epoch there was a great de-peopling of the earth by the floods of the Quaternary Age. Only gradually was it re-peopled. In parts of North Africa, like Egypt, this re-peopling by men of the Neolithic Period took place after a long lapse of
1	Luschan, in Meinhoff, op. cit., p. 243.
2	Luschan, ibid., and G. Sergi, Crania Habessinica, Rome, 1912. The work of S. M. Morant, Elliott Smith, Charles Seligman, Sir Arthur Keith, and Dudley Buxton on more restricted areas will be quoted below.
3	Cf. G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, New York, 1901; W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, New York, 1899, ch. vi; and J. de Morgan, Préhistoire orientale, Paris, 1925, Tome I, p. 188 ff.; W. H. Worrell, op. cit., p. 42 ff.
4	Préhistoire orientale, I, ch. ii.
5	Cf. M. Boule, Fossil Men, London, 1923, p. 272, H. F. Osborne, Men of the Old Stone Age, New York, 1925, p. 262, and Hrdlicka in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, LXV, 1926, p. 150. Hrdlicka holds that man did not originate in central Asia, since all human remains found there are post-glacial; but human origins are probably to be sought in western Europe.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
15
time.1 He finds a great hiatus between the palaeolitic and neolithic remains. That may well be, as it is estimated that the palaeolitic men whose culture has been studied in France lived from 50,000 to 80,000 years ago to 9000 B.C.2 Even if all this be true, there is no evidence that any new race had in the meantime entered North Africa. It is probable that its neolithic inhabitants were descendants of the survivors, who, during the great Quarternary floods, had taken refuge on the higher lands and mountains. Worrell states that “in early Quarternary times the Sahara was a well-watered region of great fertility and abundant life, a refuge for the men of Europe, when driven southward by the ice.3” The bed of a river in the eastern Sahara, called Behr-bala-Ma, can be traced from the neighborhood of the Second Cataract of the Nile nearly to the Mediterranean Sea.4 The great oases were apparently lakes, when this branch of the Nile flowed through these regions, and streams ran from them into the Bahr-bala-Ma, the beds of some of which can still be traced. The Wady Igharghar is an old river bed which, running northward between the Taseli plateau and Irawen mountains, loses itself in the sands. It can be traced northwards for hundreds of miles. Its bed contains rolled fragments of lava and fresh-water shells.5 6 Streams flowing south from the Atlas Mountains find a series of underground basins capable of being tapped by artesian wells. A well sunk by the French has thrown up fishes,
1	De Morgan, op. cit., dis. vii and viii.
2	Cf. M. Boule, Fossil Men, London, 1923, pp. 55 ff. and 325.
3	W. H. Worrell, A Study of Races of the Ancient Near East, p. 1.
4	See J. de Morgan, Préhistoire orientale, I, 118-122. The question of the desiccation of the Sahara and other deserts is not a simple one, and there has been a considerable variety of opinion upon it. One wishing to follow up the topic should consult the following: G. Rolland, “La crétecé du Sahara septentrional” in Bull, de la soc. geol. de France, 1881; Tchihatahef, “The Deserts of Africa and Asia” in British Association Reports, Southampton, 1882; K. A. Zittel, Paläontologie der lybischen Wüste, Cassel, 1893; J. Walther, Die Denudation in der Wüste, Leipsig, 1900; E. Dürkop, Die Wirtschaftsund handeis-geographischen Provinzen in der Wüste, Wolfenbüttel, 1902; C. Vélan, “Etat actuel de nos connaissances sur la géographie et géologie du Sahara d’après les explorations les plus récentes” in Revue de geogr. t. I, 1906-07, pp. 447-517; J. Lahache, “La disséchment de l’Afrique française, est-il démontré?” in Bull soc. geog. Marseilles, XXXI, 1907, pp. 149-185; M. Cartier, Mission Arneaud-Cartier: nos confines sahariens, Paris, 1908; E. F. Gautier et R. Chudeau, Missions en Sahara, 2
vols., Paris, 1909; H. Vischer, Across the Sahara from Tripoli to Borm, London, 1910.
6 Edward Hearwood, article “Sahara” in Encyc. Brit., llth ed.16
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
crabs, and fresh-water mollusks which exist below ground. Wady Tlemsi and another wady are believed to have once been rivers which flowed into the Niger and its tributaries. All our evidence tends to show that it was in North Africa including, perhaps, the Desert of Sahara, that the Hamitic race developed during the millenniums after the last Glacial Epoch, and that it was from this region that they wandered to the Nile Valley, to the horn of East Africa, to the Sudan, the Lake Region, and to the land of the Bushmen in the far south.1 We accordingly conclude that both the linguistic phenomena and the somatic characteristics of the Hamites tend to establish the second of the theories concerning their origin that were outlined above. The fact that they belong to the white race, that that race has, so far as we can tell, been in this region since the last Glacial Epoch, and that the purest Hamitic languages are found north of the Sahara, whence the present Hamites have never, apparently, migrated, all tend to establish the hypothesis that the Sahara Desert and the part of Africa north of it is the region where this race developed.
THE SEMITIC PEOPLES
The Semitic peoples—the Arabs, Akkadians or Semitic Babylonians, Assyrians, Amorites, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Aramaeans, and Abyssinians—speak languages so closely related and so distinct from other groups of tongues that there can be no question that they belong to one family and sprang from one font. Their kinship to one another presents phenomena of intimate and all-pervading relationship, which at once suggests comparison with the intimate kinship of the Romance languages in the Indo-European family. These languages have been the national languages of the Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians, of numerous Aramaean tribes, of the Phoenicians, Hebrews, Edomites, Moabites, of the Phoenician colonies, and of the Abyssians. Where Semitic languages were spoken in Africa in ancient times, as at Carthage and in Abyssinia, they were carried thither within the period of written history by immigrants, in the one case from Phoenicia, in the other from South Arabia. The habitat of the Semitic peoples has been western
1 Cf. Worrell, op. tit., p. 79 £f.; also Luschan in Meinhoff’s Sprachen der Hamiten, p. 244 if.; Boule, Fossil Men, 379 if.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
17
Asia from their first appearance in history, except as they have swept into Africa bent on colonization or conquest. The most extensive of these westward movements was that which occurred under Islam, beginning in 630 A.D., but that occurred so late as to lie beyond the purview of our present inquiry. The earlier migrations to Carthage and Abyssinia were, like it, westward movements of Asiatic peoples, though they were prompted by different motives and were not so extensive or long continued.
The various theories concerning the origin of the Semitic peoples have already been passed in review. It remains now to examine the evidence on which a judgment concerning the validity of a satisfactory theory must rest. As the problem belongs to prehistoric time, no written evidence is available; we have to depend upon facts of language, ethnology, and archaeology. We begin with an examination of the linguistic evidence. The following points may be noted as the most important.
1. These two groups of languages possess in common a widespread peculiarity which is best described as ‘pressure-articulation.’ “In its primary form it consists of a closure of the glottis and upward motion of the larynx toward the rigid base of the tongue, in addition to the main articulation which is in progress. By this forcible elevation of the larynx air pressure is created for the explosive (p, t, k, etc.) and fricative (/, s, etc.) sounds which are usually made with air pressure from the lungs: and the following vowel begins with a ‘snap’ and a ‘pinched’ sound due to the contracted condition of the throat. In this way the p is followed first by a hiatus, *, and then by1. The last element is called the ‘pressure-tone,’ and is identical with the Arabic and Hebrew letter 'Ayin. The complete sound of such a p would thus be p*\ Then also, because the back of the tongue has been raised by the upward pressure, the succeeding vowel has a ^-resonance, even though it be a or i. Some Hamitic languages have, and probably all once had, peculiar explosives or stops and fricatives of this kind. When we turn to the Semitic languages we find another sort of pressure-articulation which seems to have grown out of the first. It is applied to a limited number of consonants only, the so-called ‘emphatic’ sounds. It consists of the upward pressure of the larynx without any closure of the glottis, and therefore without any closure of the glottis after the18
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
principal articulation. In ancient Hebrew this pressure was still sufficient to change the resonance of nearby consonants and vowels. In Aramaic the pressure-tone occasionally superseded the principal articulation, and changed, e.g., ard"d into ar'd or even arqd. In Arabic nothing remains but a ^-resonance of the consonants, which changes the resonance of nearby consonants and vowels. These then are the so-called ‘emphatic’ dentals and sibilants of Hebrew and Arabic. They are not louder than ordinary sounds, but they seem to the speaker to be so, because he is sensible of the greater effort used in producing them. The pressure-tone/, and its voiceless counterpart, h, occur independently (Arabic and Hebrew 'A yin and Heth). The old emphatic k" became q through the raising of the tongue (Hebrew Qoph and Arabic Qaf). It is clear that Hamitic and Semitic possess in common a very unusual articulation, and that this articulation is inseparable from primitive Hamitic and Semitic speech.1” It should be emphatically noted that this kindred phenomenon of the two groups of languages appears in its fuller and more primitive form in certain Hamitic languages, and that its occurrence in the Semitic languages is best accounted for as a later narrowing of the early Hamitic usage.
2. A second feature common to the Semitic and Hamitic languages is the originally bi-literal and tri-literal character of their roots. It should be noted at the start that in Hamitic and Semitic speech, as in the Indo-European languages, roots are pure abstractions of the philologist. It is the part of a word or group of words which remains after suffixes and prefixes, which are added for the purpose of declension or conjugation, have been removed. Indo-European roots are typically formed by two consonants with a vowel between, such as LAB or GEN, though they may consist of a vowel only, as the root, y/i—the root of “go” or “come” in many languages. In contrast with these the roots in Hamitic and Semitic consist of consonants only, vowels being added only for purposes of declension or conjugation, and their roots never consist of vowels. Thus we have qtl, ktb, etc.2 The great majority of Semitic roots are tri-literal, and it was formerly assumed by all scholars that originally all word-roots in the speech had been tri-literal: the
1	Quoted from W. H. Worrell, Study of Races in the Ancient Near East} p. 57 f.
2	See W. H. Worrell, op. cit., p. 67 ff.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
19
few that are bi-literal, such as *ab, ‘father/ *ah, ‘brother/ which seem to be bi-literal, had been worn down, it was thought, from originally tri-literal roots. When the writer published his Sketch of Semitic Origins in 1902, this view held the field. At that time it was generally assumed that, as human beings are lazy and usually slovenly in their pronunciation, the principal changes that occurred in speech were due to the wearing down or shortening of words and roots. Erman, who had detected strong Semitic influences in Egyptian and had begun a series of demonstrations that numerous Egyptian words had been borrowed from Semitic, held then that the roots of Egyptian and the Hamitic languages had also been triliteral1—a view in which the late W. Max Müller then concurred.2 When Brockelmann published the first volume of his Vergelichende Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen in 1908 he maintained this view, but, in the preface to the second volume, which appeared in 1913, he abandoned it.3
The more complete and thorough study which has since been given to the Hamitic languages, especially by Reinisch4 and Mein-hoff,5 has made it clear that the great majority of Hamitic roots— especially those which appear to be native, were bi-literal. Further study of the roots of the Semitic languages also tends to prove that probably a large number of its present tri-literal system of roots were originally bi-literal. From these bi-literals, tri-literal roots have been built up. Sometimes it has been accomplished by re-
1	Sitzungsberichte der kg. Ak. d. Wiss. zu Berlin, 1900, p. 350.
2	See quotation in SO p. 9, n. 1.
3	Cf. also Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge sur. semit. Sprachwissenschaft, Strasburg, 1910, and H. Bauer in ZDMG, LXVI, 106 S.
4	Cf. his Somali-Sprache, Wien, 1900, his Irob-saho-Sprache, Wien, 1878, his Belin-Sprache, 1882, Bedaue-Sprache, 1893, Chamir-Sprache, Wien, 1884.
5	Die Sprachen der Hamiten, already referred to. In addition reference should be made to Collizza’s Lingua cAfar, Vienna, 1887 ; Belkassen ben Sedira’s Langue Kabyle, Alger, 1887, Motylinski, Dialecte berbère de R’edames, Paris, 1904. Stumme’s Handbuch des Schilhishchen von Tazerwalt, Leipzig, 1899. J. Halévy, Essai d’epigraphie lybique, Paris, 1875; A. Hotaneau, Essai de grammaire de la langue Tamachek, Paris, 1860; A. Hotaneau, Grammaire kabyle, Paris, 1858; R. Basset, Notes de lexicographie berbère, Paris, 1886; A. Jourdan, Cours de langue kabyle, Alger, 1887; H. Bissuel, Les Touareg de Vouest, Alger, 1888; E. Masquerey, Grammaire touareg, Paris, 1896; Rev. Fr. Evangelist de Laragasse, Somali-English Dictionary, London, 1897 : E. Masquerey, Dictionnaire française-touareg, Paris, 1898; Praetorius, Grammatik der Galla-Sprache, Leipzig, 1893; G. Faidherbe, Le Zenaga des tribus sê?iegalaises, contribution a Vétudes de la langue berbère, Paris, 1877.20
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
peating the second consonant of the root, as in the so-called A yin-ayin verbs; others have been lengthened by the addition of a waw or yodh at the beginning, the middle, or the end of the root. Still others, by prefixing the letter nun, as in the Pe-nun verbs.1 Still others appear to have been lengthened by the addition of other letters, as, for example	‘go,’ which is conjugated as though
from *"1*7*, may plausibly be assumed to have originally been *p ;	Take/ conjugated as though it were llpj, may
plausibly be held to be from Up • Similarly , ‘mock/ was originally a Hiphil from	but that was forgotten and was
treated as an independent stem and a piel made from it, (1 Kgs. 18:27). It goes back, however, to a bi-literal root ^JV A part of the process of root-development appears to have been root differentiation. Gesenius long ago observed this and gave the following examples:	‘hew down/ ^Pp, ‘cut down/
‘peel off/ which all appear to be from the same root. He thought the same root appeared with a dental in 2£?p, Tut away/ ‘destroy/ and Tip, ‘split/ and that it was softened into D3 in 1103/ ‘cut off/ With further softening the root became ‘shear/ was flattened to 11J, ‘make an incision/ and finally was gutturalized into 12^(7 , ‘pierce/ 77(7, ‘split/ 7fi(7? ‘break up/ etc. It certainly seems possible that in ways that may still be traced many tri-literal roots have been built up from bi-literals. Whether all tri-literal roots originated in this way, may be doubted. It is not improbable that in Hamito-Semitic tri-literal and bi-literal roots existed side by side from the beginning.
Sometimes, after the addition or the prefixing of the third consonant to a bi-literal stem, a differentiation in meaning was secured by changing the order of the last two consonants; thus Y'D, originally W'D, meant ‘to make an appointment/ ‘promise/ ‘meet/ whereas YD* meant ‘know/ Such cases (and examples might be multiplied), make it probable that a large number of tri-literal Semitic roots go back to a bi-literal base, and that the bi-literal roots
1 On this whole subject see the interesting brochure of S. T. H. Hurwitz, Root Determinatives in the Semitic Speech, New York, 1913.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
21
are survivals from the original form. This last inference is rendered probable by the fact that bi-literal roots occur in many of the words in most common use, such as ‘father/ ‘mother/ ‘brother/ etc.— words that would be least likely to undergo change. Here, then, is a second characteristic that is shared by the Hamitic and Semitic languages—a characteristic which appears in the Hamitic languages in its more original form, of which the Semitic form appears to be a later development. This fact does not exclude the possibility that tri-literal roots were also native to both groups of languages.
3.	A third fact that in the solution of this problem counts for much is that the pronouns—especially the personal pronouns—in the two groups of languages are practically identical. Pronouns are among the most sui generis of the parts of speech, and the identity of the pronouns in the two groups of tongues indicates identity of origin.1
4.	Again, both families of languages, the Hamitic and the Semitic, exhibit the phenomenon of polarity already referred to. For example in Hebrew and Arabic the numerals from “three” to “ten” are placed in the gender opposite to that numbered by them. It is on this principle that the so-called “broken” or “inner” plurals are made in Arabic. The singular of these nouns is usually masculine; the plurals are collective feminine nouns.2 This feeling for polarity, or the arranging of things in pairs which complement each other in gender, is a peculiar phenomenon, representing a common psychological trait that is best explained by kinship.
5.	In both groups of languages derived stems, expressing a modification of the root, are formed in the same way. An intensive stem, expressing a heightened meaning, is formed by reduplicating the root, if it is bi-literal, or by doubling the middle consonant of a tri-literal root. In the Hamitic languages the root is generally reduplicated, and this seems to be the older form. Thus in Egyptian we have w^d^d, ‘be green/ from the root w$d; Coptic, sorsr, ‘destroy/ from Sor; in Chamir, akeb, ‘collect/ akabkib, ‘collect quickly/ in Bilin, bir, ‘be light/ birbir, ‘burn/ etc. It is a common form in
1	See Leo Reinisch, Das persönliche Fürwort und die Verbalflexion in den chdmito-semitischen Sprachen, Wien, 1909, and Table I of this work.
2	See W. H. Worrell in AJSL, XLI, 179 ff. and Study of Races in the Ancient Near East, 61 ff.22
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
most Hamitic tongues. It corresponds to the pilpel forms in Hebrew, with which all Semitic scholars are familiar. The formation of an intensive form by doubling the middle letter is also too familiar to need illustration: thus QTL, ‘kill/ but QTTL, 'massacre.'
6. In both groups of languages stems expressing causation are formed by prefixing the letter s, though in some of the Semitic languages this is thinned to h, as sometimes in Indo-European (compare the Sanskrit soma and the Persian haoma), and in others it is further thinned to ' (Aleph). Thus in Akkadian and Assyrian we have ezebu, 'to leave' or 'remain,' and suzubu, 'to cause to remain' or 'save;' in Hebrew sadeq, 'to be righteous,' and hesdiq, 'to make righteous' or 'justify'; in Aramaic kHhabb, 'write,' and ’aktabh,' 'cause to write;' in Arabic walada, 'bear,' and *aulada, 'to cause to bear' or 'beget.' The system is well known to every Semitic scholar and needs no elaboration. It is not so well known, however, that the Hamitic languages formed stems expressing cause in the same way. Thus in Egyptian we have hr, 'fall,' and shr, 'overthrow;' in Coptic onh, 'to live,' taans, 'to cause to live' or 'nourish' (in this word the final h has become $); in Bedauye, gay, 'be new,' and se-gay, 'renew;' in Irob-Saho, bala, 'see' and s-bala, 'cause to see' or 'show;' in Tamasheq, egges, 'enter,' and seges, 'cause to enter;' in Shilkh, ail, 'flee,' and sail, 'cause to fl.ee/ in R’edemes ekkar, 'be light,' and sekkar, 'make light;' in Kabylee, ekhem, 'enter,' and sekhem, 'cause to enter.' In some of the Hamitic dialects that have been influenced by Kushite dialects the s has been transposed to the end of the word; thus in Bilin we have ad, 'to take,' and ad-dis, 'cause to take;' in Bedauye the causative element also is sometimes affixed, as dob, 'marry,' and dob-s, 'cause to marry;' in Chamir, aden, 'hunt,' and adens, 'cause to hunt;' in Somali, un, 'eat,' and unsi, 'cause to eat' or 'feed.' In dialects influenced by Sudanese and Bushman languages the final s has fallen away and its vowel, which appears above in Bilin as i, alone expresses causation. This is analogous to the change in Semitic of the 5 to * (Aleph). In some the i is prefixed; in others, affixed. Thus in Somali we have dil, 'kill,' and dil-i, 'cause to kill;' in Masai, a-gor-o, 'be vexed,' and a-i-ta-gor-o, 'vex' or 'make vexed' (where the loss of the s is compensated by the addition of the syllable ta); in Nama md, 'stand' and md-i, 'cause to stand' or 'place,' (though in Nama the s isTHE HAMITES AND SEMITES
23
sometimes retained as in ai, ‘suck/ and ai-si, ‘cause to suck’): in Ful, anda, ‘know/ and andina, ‘teach’ (where -na has been added to the i as the 4a- was added in Masai). Similar examples could be multiplied ad libitum. It is clear that this method of expressing causation is fundamental to the two groups of tongues, and points to descent from a common ancestry.
7.	In both groups of languages passive or reflexive stems are formed by employing the letter t. This letter may be prefixed to the root, as in the Arabic 5th and 6th stems, inserted after the first consonant of the root as in the Arabic 8th stem and in all the reflexive stems of Akkadian and Assyrian, or it may, when prefixed, be preceded by the syllable hi- as in the Hebrew hithpael, or by 'i as in the Aramaic passive forms. Thus in Hebrew we have qaddsh, ‘be holy/ and kithqaddesh, ‘sanctify oneself.’ Extensive illustration from Semitic is unnecessary. The same formation is characteristic of the Hamitic languages; thus in Irob-Saho we have bala, ‘see/ and ta-bala, ‘see oneself/ in Tamesheq, ekf, ‘give/ and tu-kef, ‘be given/ in Shilkh, as, ‘eat/ and t$$a, ‘be eaten;’ in R’de-mes, aref, ‘write/ and turef, ‘be written.’1 In dialects which have come under Kushite influences this t, like the causative element s, is transferred to the end of the word. Thus in Belin we have gadd, ‘be rich/ and gadd-t, ‘become rich/ in Bedauye, kami, ‘be sad/ and kami-t, ‘make oneself sad.’ This element, like the causative s, is clearly fundamental to the two families of speech.2
8.	Both groups of tongues also form reflexive and passive stems by using the letter n. In Semitic this forms the Hebrew niphal, the Arabic 7th stem, and the 4th or n stem in Akkadian and Assyrian. Thus in Hebrew we have kdthab, ‘write/ and nikteb, ‘be written.’ To add examples for the Semitic scholar is superfluous. In Hamitic derived stems in n are abundant. Thus in Egyptian we have from hmhm, ‘bellow/ nhmhm, ‘be made to bellow;’3 also ddw, ‘continue/
1	The /-stems are not found in Egyptian, but they appear in Coptic, where they have assumed a causative signification; see SteindorfPs Koptische Grammatik, Berlin, 1904, §§254-258.
2	In dialects influenced by Sudanese and Bushman, the t formation is lost. It does not appear in Ful, Sowali, Masai, or Nama.
3K. Sethe, Das Aegyptische Verbum, I, Leipzig, 1899, 428.24
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
and ndddd, ‘be continuous;’ in Shilkh, gaddu, ‘be like/ and ngaddu, ‘be like one another.’ In some Hamitic languages the n has become m by a change familiar to philologists, and in others, r. Under foreign influences this formative element, like the s and t already discussed, is transferred to the end of the word. Recognizing these facts, we find examples of originally w-stems in the following: inTamasheq we have eks, ‘eat/ and m-eksa, ‘eaten/ in Shilkh, nag, ‘kill/ and mnag, ‘fight one another/ in Kabylee, zenz, ‘sell/ and mzenz, ‘sell to one another/ in Belin, alib, ‘spy/ and alib-r, ‘to act as a spy/ in Bedauye, dir, ‘kill/ and m-dedar, ‘kill one another/ in Ful, gala, ‘laugh/ and galira, ‘laugh for oneself / in Hausa, nag, ‘kill/ and m~ nag, ‘fight / in Masai, sug, ‘follow/ and a-sug-are, ‘I follow together with (someone)/ in Nama, ai, ‘laugh/ and ai-ri, ‘laugh at/ in Somali, dil, ‘kill/ and dil-n, ‘be killed.’ From such examples (and they might be multiplied) it may easily be seen how widespread and how ancient this formation is in Hamitic. The fact that n has been so often changed to m and r, and that the meaning of the stems so formed have assumed such a variety of meanings (reflexive, passive, "reciprocal, and indirect) are guarantees of the high antiquity of the ^-formations. There can be no doubt that it was a characteristic of primitive Hamitic speech.
9.	One other feature common to the two groups of languages is the formation of causative-reflexive verb-stems by the use of the letters st, to which in Semitic a vowel and an Aleph (’) is usually prefixed. Thus in Arabic we have the tenth stem (istaqtala); in Ethiopic from nafsa, ‘breath/ ’estanfisa, ‘draw a breath’ or ‘inspire,’ and in Akkadian the stem IV. 1 (sutaskunu). Similarly, in Hamitic we find in Kabylee aker, ‘steal/ and tsuakar, ‘be stolen.’ In dialects that have come under Kushite influence the ts is transferred to the end of the word; thus in Chamir we find Ji, ‘go out/ and fo-t-s, ‘be brought out;’ in Bilin, cabbar, ‘expect/ and cabbar-t-is, ‘cause to be expected.’
10.	Semitic and Hamitic verbs originally possessed also but two tenses, one denoting incomplete action, or the imperfect, the other complete action, or the perfect. One of these is conjugated by prefixing pronominal particles, the other by affixing similar particles. In Akkadian and Assyrian the perfect has been almost disused and the imperfect differentiated to express complete and incomplete action. In Arabic the imperfect has been differentiated to expressTHE HAMITES AND SEMITES
25
different moods. In Egyptian the imperfect formation has been entirely lost. In the Hamitic languages one or the other is frequently lost and the one that is retained differentiated to supply the deficiency.1 It seems probable that Indo-European originally had but two or three tenses, but in Indo-European the conjugations are always formed by adding elements to the verb-stem; never, as in the Hamito-Semitic imperfect, by prefixing them.
11. To the linguistic phenomena already noted, one other should, perhaps, be added. The Semitic languages, like the Hamitic, know but two genders or two classes of nouns, one denoting males and important objects, and the other females and unimportant objects. In both groups also the feminine gender is formed by adding a t. This classification, so different from that of the Sudan languages and of the Bantu dialects on the one hand, and from that of the Indo-European languages on the other, is another evidence that the two groups of tongues have sprung from the same font.
The linguistic evidence has thus clearly established a kinship between the Hamitic and Semitic peoples.2 Does it help us to
1	Thus in Egyptian the Perfect (called in Egyptian the pseudo-Participle) occurs but rarely, and actions in past time are expressed by a form of the Imperfect differentiated from the ordinary form by the insertion of an n; cf. Gardiner, Grammar, p. 55, §67; p. 219, §295.
2	The question of the relation of Semitic to the Indo-European languages has, in recent years, sometimes been raised. The present writer has long thought that the Hamito-Semitic group had developed in a different center from the Indo-European, and quite independently of it (article “Semitic Languages” in Hastings’ Encyc. of Rel. and Ethics). Herman Moller, in his book, Semitisch und Indo-Germanisch, Kopen-hagen, 1906, endeavored to establish kinship on the basis of similarity or identity of vocabulary. The same method has been followed, but with less acumen and reserve, by L. A. Waddell in Makers of Civilization in Race and History, London, 1929.
The method is, however, essentially faulty. Identity of the expression of the same meanings by the same sounds in sporadic cases may be due either to coincidence or to the common working of human minds, as in onomatopoetic words. Identity of origin can be determined only by an examination of the whole range of linguistic facts, including phonetics, roots, and grammatical structure. All efforts to connect Semitic and Indo-European directly have failed, and are, so far as we can at present see, doomed to failure. Possibly a more remote connection, indicating a far-off origin in a common stock, could be traced through Hamitic. Meinhoff remarks that he has not investigated the relationship of Hamitic to Indo-Germanic, but that such an investigation appears to him worth the trouble. The points which seem to him worth comparing are the grouping of the nouns into classes, the origin of grammatical gender, the origin of Ablaut,’ and the expression of place-conception through vowel change in reduplicated forms in the derived verbal stems: (Sprachen der Hamiten, p. 228). Frankly, to the present writer some of the lines of investigation here suggested do not offer much hope of success. Worrell has discussed a number of the points suggested (^4 Study of26
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
decide between the contending theories as to whether Africa or Arabia was the cradle-land of this common stock? De Morgan, who, as pointed out above, held with Erman the theory that the Egyptians were Semites from Arabia, contended that the race had been in that peninsula from the pre-glacial or inter-glacial epoch. Evidence of palaeolithic man in the Arabian peninsula led him, in accordance with his dating of palaeolithic man, to this belief. During the deluges which followed the break-up of the last glacial ice, Arabia, like other lands, suffered, he believed, from the floods. Certain groups however, he believed, survived in the high mountains along the Red Sea and in Hadramaut, and from these groups the peninsula was gradually re-peopled. The people thus born, separated from other peoples by the gradual desiccation of their country ^ became, according to this theory, the Semites of history.* 1 It is not impossible that in the mountain regions mentioned men did survive the floods of that far-off time, but, if so, were they the Semites of history?
It must be said that the evidence of language, in so far as its testimony goes, is squarely against the theory. That Semites from Arabia did invade the Nile valley and form an influential factor in the composition of the Egyptian people, is no doubt true, just as many centuries later Semites from the same region invaded Abyssinia and became a dominant factor in the population of that country, but that fact is not sufficient to outweigh the many linguistic facts which tend to show that the Hamitic languages are older than the Semitic. In them features common to both families of speech have survived in their most primitive form, the Semitic form of them, as already pointed out, being later developments. A number of these forms have survived in greatest purity in Egyptian and dialects of the lands north of the Sahara. This evidence would indicate that the ancestors of the two races developed in North
Races in the Ancient Near East, pp. 46 f., 50 f., and 71 f.), and rightly suggests that certain parallels between colloquial Welsh and ancient Egyptian to which Rhys and Bryn-mor-Jones had called attention in The Welsh People, 1900, Appendix B, may be better accounted for by supposing that some of the Mediterranean race was incorporated by the Celtic stock which conquered ancient Britain, than by supposing that Hamites ever surged so far north.
1 See his Préhistoire orientale, I, 1925, pp. 202, 208, 209.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
27
Africa, probably including the Sahara, and that the wave of migration which carried Hamites into East Africa, (which, as will be pointed out later, took place long before the beginnings of Egyptian history) carried a group of Hamites into Arabia via the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, who became the ancestors of the Semites. This group, isolated for a long time in Arabia from their kinsmen in Africa, became the Semites. The Hamites, as Friedrich Müller long ago observed,1 scattered at an early date so widely over Africa and were exposed to so many different foreign influences that they vary from one another widely, not only in vocabulary, but in grammatical structure. The Semitic languages, on the other hand, resemble one another so closely, not only in grammatical structure, but in the material of their vocabularies, that it is clear that the ancestors of those who spoke them must have dwelt for a long time in close association, isolated from foreign influences.
Of course we cannot assume that Arabia was without population when the first wave of the Hamito-Semitic stock entered it. De Morgan’s theory, that sporadic groups of palaeolithic people survived the great Quarternary floods in its mountain fastnesses, may be true, but, if so, practically no trace of them has survived. It is said that in the mountains of Oman, in southeastern Arabia, there is a strange people, who practise religious rites in a strange non-Arabic tongue which no one understands, as they face the rising sun.2 These people may be descendants of a pre-Semitic race, but they may also be descendants of invaders from across the Persian Gulf, who invaded the land at some later period. In the absence of definite information as to their language and customs, the problem cannot be solved. If there ever was such a people in Arabia as de Morgan supposes, they were soon absorbed by the Semites, and were too few to exert upon the conquering race any linguistic influence that we can now trace.
The linguistic evidence, then, points to Arabia as the distinctive cradle-land of the Semites, the point of departure from which they were distributed to their other national homes, and to their ultimate
1	The passage in the text states in the writer’s own words the substance of a passage in Müller’s Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaften, vol. Ill, pt. 2, p. 225. The passage was quoted in SO p. 10 f.
2	P. W. Harrison, The Arab at Home, New York, 1924, p. 99.28
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
African origin. South Arabia, then, was the first separate habitat of the Semitic peoples. It will later appear that this part of Arabia was, in all probability, the distribution-point from which the various Semitic nationalities radiated. Sprenger long ago guessed that the Nejd, in northeastern Arabia, was that part of Arabia which impressed upon the Semites their peculiar characteristics.1 This view seemed for a time to the present writer to be confirmed by the consideration that the Arabic language, which is in its grammatical structure so much more elaborate than the other Semitic languages, and which appeared to be the native tongue of this region, was believed to have preserved more of the characteristics of primitive Semitic speech than any other Semitic language. It now seems, however, that this consideration is not valid. Linguistic forms are not always shortened or simplified.2 Isolated groups may, for various reasons, develop new and more elaborate forms of expression. Sometimes these serve to express some passing phase of thought, such as repetition or iteration. Thus in Hittite -ski may be added to the stem of any verb to denote the repetition of the action,3 whereas in Latin the ending has hardened into a part of some verbs, as, e.g., cognosco. In Sanskrit also a number of special aorist forms were developed,4 which expressed apparently, when first employed, special meanings. Thus there are a aorists, 5 aorists, is aorists, sis aorists and sa aorists. They were forms lengthened from what appears as the normal Indo-European forms of these tenses. It is not at all unlikely, therefore, that the elaborate grammar of classical Arabic may have been a special expansion of primitive Semitic speech. Unfortunately we possess no extensive literature in Sabaean and Minaean, the dialects of southern Arabia. We have, however, some hundreds of inscriptions, from which a fair idea of the nature of these dialects may be formed, and we have grammars of Mehri and Soqotri, dialects which sprang from them. It would seem from such information as we possess, that the language of South Arabia was of a simpler grammatical
1	Leben und Lehre des Mohammad, I, 242, 243.
2 Cf. Otto Jespersen, Language, its Nature, Development, and Origin, New York, 1924, p. 330 ff.
3	See G. A. Barton, Hittite Studies, I, Paris, 1928, p. 16 f.
4	Cf. Whitney, Sanskrit Grammar, Boston, 1879, §§846-920.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
29
structure than classical Arabic, but that it contained just those elements which we have found to be common to the Semitic and Ham-itic dialects in general. It will also appear, at a later point of our investigation, that not only the Abyssinians, but the Akkadians, Amorites, and Hebrews possessed many elements of speech and thought in common with the people of South Arabia. To such a degree is this true, that it seems probable that South Arabia was the primitive Semitic cradle-land, and that the elaborate grammar of classical Arabic was a special development in some local part of Arabia (probably the Hejaz).
The Semitic languages are usually divided into two groups, the North and South Semitic Languages. The most marked difference between the two groups is commonly supposed to be found in the method of forming the plurals of nouns. In the North Semitic languages plurals are always formed by adding endings to the roots; in the South Semitic tongues they may be formed by internal vowel changes, i.e., the South Semitic languages employ “broken” or “inner” plurals. Worrell regards this characteristic as so marked that he supposes that the northern Semites must have separated from the southern and lived for a long time in a habitat of their own, isolated from the others. He suggests, accordingly, that South Arabia (Yemen) was the cradle-land of the southern Semites, and the Nejd, of the northern.1 This theory might explain the non-use of “broken” plurals by northern Semites, either by disuse of it or because it was developed after they parted from the main group, but, as will appear later, there are resemblances between Akkadian and Amorite and Hebrew which indicate a close contact with South Arabia. Perhaps the objections are not insuperable, but they make one hesitate to give the suggestion full endorsement. They will be considered in tracing the formation of the different Semitic nations. The evidence known to us at present makes it probable that the African ancestors of the Semites first settled in South Arabia; that the Arabic language developed in the Hejaz seems probable; that the North Semitic languages developed in the Nejd is, we believe, an untenable theory. Since the feminine Athtar from which Ishtar and Ashtart are derived, as well as the Amorite god
Study of Races in the Ancient Near East, p. 12 f.30
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
'Amin, are known in South Arabia, we believe the North Semitic cradle-land must be sought in that part of the peninsula.1 On one other point, it has been thought, the linguistic evidence seems to shed some light: the degree of culture or mental power attained by these peoples at the periods when they separated from one another. Some of the numerals in the two groups of languages are the same, but they have different values. Thus md in Egyptian means Ten/ but in Semitic its philological counterpart, Arabic mi’tun, Hebrew me’ah (originally me’ath), Akkadian me, means one hundred, the highest of the tens. Ethiopic employs a word ’elph to designate a ‘myriad’ or an indefinite large number. The other Semitic languages, with the exception of Akkadian and its daughter, Assyrian, employ the word to signify ‘a thousand/ the highest of the hundreds. Worrell infers2 from these facts that at the time of the separation of the Hamites from the Semites they could only count to ten, and that when the Akkadians and Abyssinians split off from the common Semitic stock they could only count to a hundred, and that before the separation of the Amorite-Canaanite stock (about 2500 B.C.) they had learned to count to a thousand. If this reasoning be valid it is possible here to obtain a glimpse of the history of Hamito-Semitic dispersion in terms of mental development, if not in terms of chronology. We cannot, however, assume that peoples so widely scattered developed mentally at the same time with equal rapidity.
Thus far, in our effort to discover the cradle of the Semites, we have dealt with linguistic evidence alone. It is now time to inquire whether the conclusions thus reached are confirmed by what is known of the physical characteristics of these peoples. In determining racial kinship craniologists take into account various measurements of the skull which exhibit little inner racial variation, such as the size and width of the nasal apertures, the emphasis of superorbital ridges, the prognathous character of the jaw with the facial angle, and, above all, the relation of the length of the skull to its width, which is known as the cephalic index. Skulls the width of which is .80 or more of the length are called brachiocephalic, or round headed. When the cephalic index falls to .70
1	The evidence for this statement is more fully set forth in Ch. VII below.
2	Ibid., p. 56.THE HAMITES AND SEMITES
31
or below, they are called dolichocephalic, or long headed; between 70 and 80, mesocephalic. Of course, in order that results should be of scientific value a large number of skulls should be measured. Most of the investigations so far published are based on a limited amount of material, nevertheless the results are significant. In addition to the work of Sergi and von Luschan already quoted, reference may be made to Charles Seligman’s “Physical Characteristics of the Arabs” in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 47, 1917, pp. 214 ff.; Elliott Smith’s Ancient Egyptians, London, 1911; Dr. S. M. Morant’s “Comparison of Certain Groups of Predynastic Egyptians and Ancient Sumerians” in Bio-metrika, Vol. XVI, 1925, p. 1 ff.: Sir Arthur Keith’s chapter on skulls in Hall and Woolley’s Al-'Ubaid, London and Philadelphia, 1927, and L. H. Dudley Buxton’s chapter on skulls in S. Langdon’s Kish, Paris, 1925. For the interpretation of these facts reference may also be made to Sir Charles Keith’s Antiquity of Man, Lond. 2 ed., 1925, and M. Boule’s Fossil Men, London, 1923. In order to understand the bearing of these investigations upon our problem, it is necessary to note that palaeolithic man, wherever his skull has been measured, was dolichocephalic, while neolithic man was often brachiocephalic. As we have seen, palaeolithic man flourished in Europe and North Africa; he has not been found in central Asia. Neolithic man appears to have developed in central Asia, whence he migrated westward into Europe, where he constituted the Alpine and Nordic races, and southward and southwestward into other parts of Asia. The general result of the application of cranial measurements to skulls ancient and modern in the Semitic world is that in northern and central Arabia, where Semitic stock is comparatively pure, it has been dolichocephalic for at least 2000 years, and presumably, therefore, always.1 In South Arabia, across which, as will be shown in detail later, races have swept back and forth between Africa and the East, there is a slight percentage of excess of brachiocephals, the percentage being 52.3 of the skulls measured.1 In other Semitic-speaking lands a mixture of round heads and long heads is usually found among ancient skulls, often giving way later to the round-headed (brachiocephalic) type.
1 See C. Seligman in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute} Vol. 47,1917, p. 214 ff.32
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
These mixtures will be discussed in detail in a later chapter, when the composition of the various Semitic-speaking nations and of the Egyptians is considered. It will then appear that, in these nations, Semitic languages have been imposed by dominant fractions of nations that as wholes have been made up from different races, so that Semitic languages were spoken by nations, the non-Semitic element in which ultimately changed its somatic type. The point of interest to our present topic is that the Arabs belong to the dolichocephalic type and thus ally themselves with Africa rather than with the brachiocephals of central Asia.1 Even in South Arabia, across which, as will appear later, other types have wandered, leaving a deposit, the dolichocephalic type has not been altogether obliterated. We conclude, then, that the results of a study of craniology tends to confirm the conclusions concerning the origin and distribution of the Hamito-Semitic race, to which we have been led by the study of their languages.
1 That Asiatic man was brachiocephalic even in palaeolithic time, or earlier, appears to be borne out by the measurements of the skulls of Pekin man, whose cephalic index was 78.21 - almost up to 80 - while the cephalic index of Pitheacnthropus of Java, his nearest neighbor among fossil men and presumably from the same general stock, was 80 to 81. See Davidson Black in Palseontologia Sinica, Series D, Vol. VII, Fasc. II, Peiping (Peking), 1931, p. 92.II
THE NEIGHBORS OF THE SEMITES AND HAMITES
ITH few exceptions, of which the northern Arabs appear to
be one, each nation, as nations have existed in the historical period, has resulted from a fusion of peoples of different races in a kind of melting pot. This is true of most of the Semitic and Hamitic nations. Peoples of this stock became the dominant element in lands already populated by men of other stocks, and out of the fusion came the great nations of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and Hebrews. It becomes necessary, then, for us to form some definite idea of the ancient Elamites, Sumerians, the Hurri, Mitanni, and the conglomerate people whom we call Hittites.
One of the most ancient centers of civilization in all these countries was Susa in ancient Elam. Here de Morgan found in the lowest stratum a stone-age necropolis, which contained a type of pottery of extraordinary beauty.1 Unfortunately it was impossible to rescue from any of the tombs a skull, or a sufficient part of one, to enable experts to measure it. This civilization was, apparently, exterminated by the conditions which prevailed during a flood, and was followed at a long interval by another, which produced a different type of pottery, peculiar in its character and texture. This civilization was of considerable extent, pottery of the same type having been found at Tepeh-Moussain, Tepeh-Khazineh, Tepeh-Aly-Abad, and a number of other places.2 Pottery of the same type has been found at Tell-edh-Dhiyab in eastern Assyria, between the foothills of the Zagros and Gebel Hamrin, at Kou-yunjik (ancient Nineveh), at Carchemish, and in Antolia.3 Pottery
1	For this first civilization of Elam see de Morgan, Délégation en Perse, Vols. XII and XIII, and de Morgan, Préhistoire orientale, III, 48-74.
2	See de Morgan, Délégation en Perse, Vol. VIII, and Préhistoire orientale, III, 75 ff.
3	See G. A. Barton in the American Historical Review, XXXIII, 1928, 750-783.
THE ELAMITES
3334
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
of this same type has also been found at Anau,1 east of the Caspian Sea, and the links just mentioned connect the originators of this civilization with central Asia. The originators of this civilization are by some believed to have been brachiocephalic.2 Their culture was neolithic. They employed a hieroglyphic system of writing which they had apparently invented, though this was afterward discarded in favor of that employed by the Sumerians. Settlements of these people were also established at Eridu and Tell-el-Obeid, near Ur in southern Babylonia, where their pottery has been found.3 It has since been found at other points, as will be noted in later chapters. Petrie thought that representatives of this people also pushed across southern Arabia and, traveling up the Red Sea, found their way to Egypt through the Wady Hammamat, or one of the valleys connecting Upper Egypt with the sea, for pottery and implements of Elamite style and type are found in Egypt at a period considerably anterior to the establishment of the first dynasty,4 but the extension of this type of culture was probably due to Semites. The Elamites, thus established, continued as an influential people until after the establishment of the Persian empire. About 3000 B.C., or soon afterward, they were conquered by Eannatum,5 king of Lagash, but soon threw off the yoke. Two centuries later they were brought under the sway of Akkad for a hundred years or more by Sargon and his successors, Rimush, Manishtusu and Naram-Sin.6 Again they were subjected to Babylonia under the third dynasty of Ur.7 In the twenty-second century before Christ they invaded Babylonia and furnished rulers to the dynasty of Larsa.8 A thousand years later than that, they were again in a position to overrun the southern alluvium, and again furnished a short-lived dynasty to the country. Three or four hundred years later they were still powerful enough to contest the
1	Cf. R. Pumpelly, Explorations in Turkestan, Washington, 1908, and Frankfort, Study of Pottery in the Near East, I, London, 1924, dis. II and III.
2	Cf. de Morgan, Préhistoire Orientale.
3	See Hall and Woolley, Al-Ubaid, London and Philadelphia, 1927.
4	Cf. Petrie, Predynastic Egypt, London, 1920, p. 49.
6	Cf. Barton, Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, New Haven, 1929, p. 34 ff.
6	Barton, ibid., pp. 106-145.
7	Barton, ibid., p. 281 ff.
8	Barton, ibid., p. 318 if.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
35
power of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.), and Ashurbanipal (668-626 B.C.).1 A hundred years later they were still sufficiently influential to make it worth while for Darius I to make a version of the Behistun inscription in their tongue, as well as in Persian and Babylonian.2 In the invasions and counter invasions of this long period there were many opportunities for the injection of blood of the Elamite stock, not only into the prehistoric Egyptians, but into the people of South Arabia, and especially into the people of the Babylonian melting pot.
THE SUMERIANS
Recent excavations in Babylonia show that three distinct cultures and perhaps several races had occupied the alluvial plain before the coming of the Sumerians.3 The remains of the cultures of these peoples show cultural, if not racial connections with the Elamites. The Sumerians entered the country at a comparatively late date in prehistoric time.4 We do not know what they called themselves. The Sumerians were in Babylonia before the dawn of history, and contributed most to its civilization. They were a highly cultured agricultural people, when they entered the country.5 Whence they came, we do not know. It was formerly thought that they came from the East and were somehow akin to the Elamites,6 but it is now clear that they represented a civilization distinct from and
1	Cf. Schrader, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, II, pp. 102-105 and 254-259.
2	Cf. F. H. Weissbach, Die K'eilinschrifien der Achimeniden, Leipzig, 1914.
3	Sumer, the name by which southern Babylonia was called after about 2400 B.C., appears to be a corruption of the name Girsu, the Sumerian name of one of the quarters of Lagash. In the earliest inscriptions the name is frequently written SU-GIR or SUN-GIR: this might easily be corrupted into Sumir or Sumer. For presentations of this theory, see H. Radau, Early Babylonian History, p. 58 n6: Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria, I, 356; and Barton, Semitic Origins, 192 n.l.
4	Frankfort, Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem, Chicago, 1932, holds that the Sumerians were in the country from the earliest period of its habitation. Jordan, Dritte vorläufiger Bericht über die von der Notgemeinschaft der deutschen Wissenschaft in Uruk unternommen Ausgrabungen, Berlin, 1932 (hereafter cited as Uruk), p. 36, dates their coming comparatively late in the long prehistoric period through which Babylonia passed. Speiser, American Journal of Archaeology, Oct.-Dec. 1932, p. 471, places it still later. The writer believes Frankfort to be certainly mistaken in his view.
5	See C. L. Woolley, The Sumerians, Oxford, 1929, Chs. I and II. There is much in Ch. I concerning the ethnology, however, from which one must dissent.
6	See, e.g., the late W. H. Ward in the American Journal of Archaeology, New Ser. Vol. IX, 1905, pp. 77 ff.36
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
independent of that of Elam. They spoke an agglutinative language1 quite distinct from that of Elam;2 they made a type of pottery quite different from that found at Susa,3 and they were the authors of a pictographic system of writing that was clearly not of Elamite origin.4 A few years ago one was inclined to seek their origin in the north, and to hope that further study of the Caucasian languages might bring to light some dialect akin to the Sumerian tongue, but that hope seems at present to be vain. The work of those who have tried to prove it is not convincing.5 There is much to be said for the theory that the Sumerians entered Babylonia from the south, approaching it via the Persian Gulf, and that they came from a warm country. In the first place, they are found in control of cities in southern Babylonia. While specimens of their art have been found as far north as the city of Ashur,6 Sumerian control during the historical period did not extend north of Kutha. If they ever had control of Kish and Opis, they lost it just at the dawn of history to the Akkadians. Agade and Babylon were distinctly Semitic cities. Other indications of a southern origin are that their dress consisted, as numerous statues and reliefs show, of a skirt, which left the body nude from the waist up7—a type of dress which hardly originated in a cold climate. Further, on solemn religious occasions, when Sumerians were officiating before the gods, they
1	For details see S. Langdon, Sumerian Grammar, Paris, 1911; F. Delitzsch, Sumer-ische Grammatik, Leipzig, 1914: and A. Poebel, Grammatik der sumerische S proche, Rostock, 1923.
2	See, e.g., the specimens of the language published by Scheil in de Morgan’s Délégation en Perse, Vols. Ill, V, VI, and XIV.
3	Cf de Morgan’s Délégation en Perse, vol. XIII with the pottery pictured in de Sarzec’s Découvertes en Chaldée. Specimens of both kinds are pictured in Frankfort’s Study of Pottery in the Ancient Near East, I.
4	Cf. the Elamite writing of the earliest time in Délégation en Perse, vol. VI, with the Sumerian as set forth in Barton’s Origin and Development of Babylonian Writing, Leipzig, 1913.
5	For attempts to establish a connection see M. Tseretheli’s articles, “Sumerian and Georgian,” in JRAS, 1914, 1-36; 1915, 255-288; and 1916, 1-58; also C. Autran, “Suffixes pluriels asianiques et Caucasians,” in Babyloniaca, VIII, 1924, 59 ff., and F. Bork, “Das Sumerisch ein kaukasische Sprache,” in OLZ, XXVII, 1924, 169 f.
6	Cf. W. Andrae, Die Archaischen Ischtar-Tempel in Assur, Leipzig, 1922, p. 56; also Sidney Smith, Early History of Assyria to the Year 1000, London, 1928, ch. VI.
7	See, e. g., the picture of Ur-Nina and his family on the plaque pictured in de Sarzec’s Découvertes en Chaldée, pi. 2bis; the various statues of Gudea pictured in the same work, and the statue of Lugaldaudu in Banks’ Bismya, pp. 191 f.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
37
discarded all clothing, and were entirely nude.1 If they came from the south, the question whence they migrated is a most interesting one. Some have attempted recently to find the original home of the Sumerians in the valley of the Indus. As long ago as 1912 three inscribed seals of an unusual character were found at Harappa on the Ravi in the Pen jab.2 Since 1924 the Archaeological Survey of India has excavated both at Harappa and at Mohenjo-daro, in the Sind on the Indus, in strata far below those which yield Buddhistic antiquities, sites in which they have found hundreds of inscribed objects.3 A few of the signs in these inscriptions (twenty-five out of 118 signs), resemble Sumerian characters so closely that, if all the signs were harmonious with these, we should have no hesitation in pronouncing the writing Sumerian. These inscriptions were found in connection with brick buildings and pavements which closely resemble the brick-work of the Sumerians in Babylonia of the period of the third dynasty of Ur, 2400-2300 B.C. These facts taken together have led some enthusiastic students4 to connect the beginnings of civilization in India with the Sumerians. As ninety-three out of 124 characters in seventy-two inscriptions which the present writer once studied do not resemble Sumerian characters at all, some of them resembling Hittite hieroglyphs more, and some of them characters in early Chinese writing, while one or two resemble Egyptian hieroglyphs, the inscriptions cannot be Sumerian.5
1	A good example of this is afforded by the plaque from Nippur published in Hil-precht’s Old Babylonian Inscriptions, PI. XVI, and often reproduced elsewhere.
2	They were published by Arthur Venis in JRAS, 1912, pp. 699-703.
3	See Sir John Marshall’s article, “First Light from a Long Forgotten Civilization: New Discoveries of an Unknown Pre-historic Part of India,” in The Illustrated London News, Sept. 20, 1924, p. 528; also the issue for Jan. 7,1928, pp. 12-15, and The Archeological Survey of India, Annual Report, 1922-23, pp. 102-104; 1923-24, pp. 47-54 and pi. XIX; 1924-25, pp. 60-80 and pis. XXII & XXVIII.
4	Professor A. H. Sayce first called attention to the Sumerian resemblances in an article in The Illustrated London News of Sept. 27, 1924, p. 566. He was followed by C. I. Gadd and Sidney Smith in the same journal for Oct. 4, 1924, pp. 614, 615. The hint thus given was taken up by L. A. Waddell in his book The Indo-Sumerian Seals Deciphered, London, 1925—a book thoroughly unsound in method. Vaidyanatha Ayyar, an Indian scholar, building on Waddell’s work, published in 1927, at Madras, a book entitled The Sumerian Origin of the Laws of Manu—the trend of which is sufficiently indicated by its title. The last two works certainly are based on unreality.
5	The writer has carefully compared the signs in these Indian seals with Chinese, Elamite, Sumerian, Egyptian, Hittite, Cretan, and Cypriote characters, and has no hesitation in saying that it is independent of them all. His conclusions have been pub-38
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
They represent an independent evolution of picture-writing, as independent of all other systems as the Chinese, Elamite, Sumerian, Egyptian, Hittite, and Cretan systems are independent of one another. The Indian origin of the Sumerians cannot be predicated on the basis of these discoveries. Possibly there was an interchange of commerce between Sumer and the Indus, which led to the adoption of a few Sumerian characters, but it is not necessary to suppose even that, for the resemblance of a few characters in the two systems may be accidental, just as the resemblance between some of these Indian characters and Chinese and Hittite must be accidental.
If we cannot connect the Harappa and Mohenjo-daro seals with the Sumerians, we have no evidence connecting the Sumerians with India. Of course they may have originated in some Indian center further away than the Indus, though that is not probable. Others have thought of some point on the shores of Persia, accessible by water to southern Babylonia; the only difficulty with this theory is that we know of no center in that region where traces of such a civilization have been found. As plausible a theory would be that they originated in Oman in eastern Arabia, and that the curious people in the mountains of Oman, who, according to Harrison,* 1 still adore the rising sun with religious exercises in an unknown tongue, may be their descendants. It is possible that such a people might have descended from survivors of palaeolithic man, who, during the floods at the end of the glacial epoch, survived in the
lished in Vol. VIII of the Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research; a comparative table of the signs is published in Vol. X. Influence from the Indus on early Sumerian art has been suggested to Sidney Smith, {Early History of Assyria to 1000 B.C., London, 1928, pp. 49-52), by the resemblance of a bull pictured on a seal found by Woolley at Ur; {The Antiquaries Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 1, Jan. 1928, p. 26 and pi. XI, no. 2), to the pictures of bulls on these Indian seals. It is doubtful, however, whether the characteristics referred to may not be due to psychological similarity, since they appear also on a prehistoric Egyptian plaque, (see de Morgan, Prehistoire orientate, II, 140). If there is a connection, it is difficult to think of its having originated in India. The full publication of a thousand inscriptions in Sir John Marshall’s Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, 1931, is now available. An examination of them confirms the opinion expressed in 1928.
1 P. W. Harrison, The Arab at Home, New York, 1924, p. 99. See also Bertram Thomas, “The South-Eastern Borderlands of Ruba al Khali” in The Near East, London, December 6 and 13, 1928; also C. Rathjens in the same journal for January 10, 1929, p. 39 and H. St. J. Philby in the issue of Jan. 17,1929, p. 77. These gentlemen think the non-Semitic people of whom they find traces, Hamites.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
39
mountains of Oman. Until we have more evidence, this theory, however ill supported, is as good as any other.
However, before committing ourselves to any theory, we should ask whether the examination of skulls from ancient tombs affords us any evidence of the racial affiliations of the Sumerians. Up to the present time the results of two such investigations are available : L. H. Dudley Buxton’s examination of the skulls found byMackay at Kish,1 and Sir Arthur Keith’s study of those found by Woolley at Tell-el-Obeid.2
At Kish eight skulls were found in a prehistoric tomb. Of these, five Buxton found to be dolichocephalic in type, consistent in form and comparable to those of the pre-dynastic Egyptians, though with certain minor differences. Two of the skulls were brachiocephalic or round headed. The brachiocephals are divided by ethnologists into two classes. One is represented by the Alpine and other western races, the other by the Mongoloids. The round-headed skulls from Kish resembled the western rather than the eastern type. Buxton thinks the dolichocephalic skulls at Kish were those of Semites, while the round-headed skulls he thinks belonged to Sumerians. , The indisputable facts of importance are the differences in the types of the skulls. Before accepting Buxton’s interpretation, other facts should be considered. Sir Arthur Keith’s investigation is based on an examination of two groups of skulls; one from Tell-el-Obeid, buried at the very dawn of history by a people who employed the Sumerian language and script, and who were presumably, therefore, Sumerians; the other from a cemetery at Ur containing bodies from 1900-1700 B.C., buried by people who spoke Akkadian. Keith found the Sumerians to be dolichocephalic with large brain capacity. Their skulls resembled remarkably those of the pre-dynastic Egyptians described by Morant,3 and Keith thinks that somatically the Sumerians and the pre-dynastic Egyptians had a common ancestry. He also regards them as belonging to the same race which today occupies Mesopotamia. It goes without saying that the present population of Iraq is largely Semitic and Arabic, since to our certain knowledge it has been over-
published in Langdon, Kish, Paris, 1924, pp. 115-125.
2	Published in Hall and Woolley, Al-Ubaid, pp. 214-240.
3	Biometrika, 1925, p. 1 ff.40
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
run with wave after wave of Semites for the last 5000 years. He found here no trace of the round-headed Hittite or Mongoloid type. The skulls from the Semitic cemetery at Ur, 1900-1700 B.C., were of the same dolichocephalic type, but possessed a smaller brain capacity. The inhabitants of Ur at this period were apparently in intellect considerably inferior to the people of Tell-el-Obeid of two thousand years earlier. So far as the testimony of the skulls enables one to tell, however, they belonged to the same race. We know only from the testimony of the inscriptions that they were peoples speaking languages in no way related to one another.
These results are strikingly different from Buxton’s, for Buxton thought the Sumerians round headed. It must be remembered that Buxton was not guided by inscriptions in assigning his skulls to races, and that since he wrote our knowledge of the elements, which might at this period enter into a Mesopotamian racial mixture, has been increased. The researches of Chiera and Speiser have shown that the round-headed predecessors of the Hurri, were in the Tigris valley. It follows that individuals of this race might easily have been buried in a prehistoric tomb at Kish. If we assign Buxton’s round-headed skulls to this race, as doubtless we ought to do, it follows that his dolichocephalic skulls from Kish might be either Sumerian or Semitic. We could only decide if we had written material from the same stratum.
The investigation of Sir Arthur Keith opens three possibilities. Either the later inhabitants of El-Obeid were Semites who employed the Sumerian language, or the substratum of the populace were Semites who were dominated by a foreign race of higher culture a race which had imposed its language without being sufficiently numerous to change the racial type—or the Sumerians were themselves descended from the dolichocephalic men of palaeolithic time, who had survived in some mountain fastness far from the Hamitic-Semitic center, and had developed an entirely different language. Of these three possibilities, the last seems to the present writer most probable. The round-headed peoples came from the north. We have already seen reason to think that the Sumerians came from the south. It is possible that their home-land was Oman or western Persia. Perhaps they were already inhabitants of eastern Arabia when the Semites entered its western part from Africa.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
41
While we possess long lists of Babylonian dynasties, two facts prevent us from forming a certain chronology of its history during its earliest millenniums: there are breaks in our chronological tablets, and we do not know how often or how much the dynasties of different cities, therein recorded, overlapped one another.1 The civilization of El-Obeid, from which the material examined by Sir Arthur Keith came, were found in connection with inscriptions of a king of the first non-mythical dynasty of which the chronological tablets give us a record. This dynasty ruled as early as 3100 B.C., and possibly as early as 3500 B.C. During the season of 1927-28 Woolley found at Ur the royal tombs of a king, queen, and prince of a still earlier time—a time previous to the records of our chronological tablets. This pre-historic monarch was apparently Sumerian, for he bore a Sumerian name, Mes-kalam-dim,2 and he employed the Sumerian script. The objects of silver and gold found in these tombs were of most exquisite workmanship, exhibiting a mastery of the technical details of manufacture and a degree of taste that are most surprising. One peculiar head-dress of remarkable character resembles in technique of workmanship one found in the second stratum at Susa.3 There must have been intercourse between these two centers of civilization at this period. A surprising feature of these royal burials was that servants, ladies in waiting, a harpist with his harp, a chariot drawn by donkeys, together with the charioteer, had all been killed and buried with their royal master and mistress. There were their skeletons and also the chariot and the harp. Evidently the Sumerians killed attendants that those whom they had served might not enter the future life unattended. It was known before that some other peoples had had such a custom, but this is the first evidence known to us that the Sumerians practised it.
Our next extended knowledge of the Sumerians is derived from the extensive records found at Lagash (Telloh) by de Sarzec and Cros. Here a prosperous city-state flourished from about 3100 to 2800 B.C. Sometimes its rulers were independent kings (Enkhegal, Ur-Nina, Eanatum, and Urukagina), and one of them conquered
1	See Barton, Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, Appendix I.
2	See Museum Journal, March, 1928, p. 9. Woolley reads it Mes-kalam-dug.
3	See Délégation en Perse, VII, pis. VIII and IX.42
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Elam.1 The civilization of this state was of a very high order. Silver and gold were wrought into artistic objects, and a highly organized state with a keen consciousness of social justice existed. The workmanship of the objects found shows, as did the objects from the tomb of Mes-kalam-dim at Ur, a state of civilization considerably more advanced than that of the same date in Egypt. About 2800 B.C. Lagash was sacked by the king of Erech, who was, in his turn, overthrown twenty-five years later by the great Sargon of Agade. For a hundred years or more Sargon and his successors subjugated the whole Sumerian country as well as distant Elam. Later, under the nominal sway of a dynasty of the Guti, a people from the hills east of the Tigris of whom we know little, the prosperity of Lagash revived. This was the period when the great Patesi, Gudea, flourished.2 The buildings which he erected, the numerous statues with which he adorned them, and the wide extent of territory from which he drew materials for his constructions, all testify to the peacefulness of the times and the existence of an extensive and prosperous commerce. The royal chronicles, which under earlier rulers had been stiff and unadorned compositions, became in Gudea’s reign records highly literary in character and adorned with telling similes.3 The various arts of the earlier time were continued in a state of high excellence. Between 2400 and 2300 B.C. the city of Lagash was subject to the kings of the third dynasty of Ur. This dynasty was Sumerian, and was the last great empire the Sumerians produced. During its sway of 117 years there was a revival of enthusiasm for Sumerian culture. It is from the inscriptions of this period that we first find the name Sumer applied to southern Babylonia. After the fall of the third dynasty of Ur the political supremacy of Babylonia passed into the hands of another race. The process was a gradual one: it took 150 to 200 years to accomplish it, but by the time of Hammurabi, about 2100-2050 B.C., it was complete, and the Sumerians were submerged by others in the Babylonian racial melting pot.
1	For a sketch of the history see L. W. King, A History of Sumer and Akkad, London, 1910; for the inscriptions which give the information, Barton, The Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, New Haven, 1929.
2	See the references in the preceding note.
3	See Barton, Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, pp. 204-255 or I. M. Price, The Great Cylinder Inscriptions A St B of Gudeat Leipzig, 1927.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
43
During the 2000 years or more of Sumerian history other Sumerian monarchies than those of Ur and Lagash flourished. We obtain glimpses of them in the records that have been recovered, but at present our knowledge of Sumerian civilization and art is derived mainly from the excavations of these two cities.
The Sumerians were the leaders of the Babylonian civilization. Apparently they received some stimulus from Elam, the civilization of which they found in southern Babylonia upon their arrival. Nevertheless their own culture was original. In the 1500 years or more between 3500 and 2000 B.C., they developed not only a degree of mastery of the arts of life extraordinary for that period of the world, but worked out the principles of social organization in a remarkable manner, embodying it in laws which, collected by the great Semitic king Hammurabi, became the famous code which bears his name. During this period, too, they developed an extensive mythological, liturgical, and magical literature, which exerted a great influence upon all neighboring nations. In short, the Sumerians became the pattern of culture for all western Asia. Their culture was borrowed by the Semites who ultimately conquered and absorbed them. The Sumerian language was the speech of liturgy and hymnology long after it ceased to be spoken in Babylonia, just as Latin was in western Europe, and we have copies of hymns written in it that were made in the first century before Christ. As a factor in history, however, the Sumerians, except for their culture, disappeared about 2000 B.C.
THE HURRI AND MITANNI
Reference has already been made1 to the fact that a pottery, identical in type with that of the second stratum at Susa, was found at Tell-edh-Dhiyab between the foothills of the Zagros mountains and Jebel Hamrin in the southeastern part of what was ancient Assyria, at Kouyunjik, the site of ancient Nineveh, and at Carche-mish. In recent years a series of discoveries has revealed to us something of the successors of the people who made this pottery, if not of the people themselves. In 1906 the late Professor Winckler discovered the now famous archive of cuneiform tablets at Boghaz Koi in Asia Minor, and he had not gone far in his reading of them
1 See above, p. 33.44
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
before he found references to the Hurri, a people who dwelt in Upper Mesopotamia, to the East of the Euphrates. In the same inscriptions mention was made of the Mitanni, a kingdom with which Thothmes III of Egypt had fought in the fifteenth century B.C., and which from his chronicles was known to extend east of the Euphrates. It appeared from the records at Boghaz Koi that the Hurri lived still further to the east, apparently in the region in which was the biblical Haran. Among the letters found at El-Amarna in Egypt in the winter of 1887-88 there were some letters from Dushratta, a king of the Mitanni, to Amenophis IV of Egypt. One of these was in the Mitannian language, and has been deciphered by the labors of Messerschmidt1 and Bork.2 From this letter we learn that the Mitannian language was neither an Indo-European nor a Semitic tongue, but belonged to some other family of speech. We further learn from the texts found at Boghaz Koi that the Mitannians were really Hurri, for Mattiuaza, a son of Dushratta, in a treaty with Subbiluliama, king of the Hittites, twice employs the phrase “we Hurri.5’3 It thus becomes clear that the Hurri were neither Semitic nor Indo-European. This last statement needs, however, a little modification, for, among the many gods that are invoked in the solemnization of treaties between the Mitanni and the Hittites, Indra, Varuna, and Mitra,4 three Aryan deities are invoked. It is accordingly clear that there was an Aryan element among the Mitanni, but this element was not sufficiently numerous to impose its speech upon the nation. The presence of this element is, however, significant. In spite of its presence, the Hurri were overwhelmingly non-Indo-European.
In the spring of 1925 Professor Chiera, then Professor-in-charge of the American School of Oriental Research at Baghdad, conducted an excavation in the mound of Tarkalan, near the modern town of Kirkuk in the country to the southeast of Mosul.5 From a house
1	Mitteilungen der vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, 1899, Heft 4.
2	Die Mitannisprache, in the Mitteilungen der vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, 1909.
3	In one case the phrase is ni-e-nu LUme® hur-ri, “we men of Hurri,” in the other ni-e-nu TURme® hur-ri, “we sons of Hurri”; see Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoi, I, no. 3 rev. lines 41 and 44.
4	See Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoi, I 1, rev., 55, 56. Varuna and Mitra appear here not as individual deities, but collections of spirits. The word ildni, a plural, is in apposition with each of them.
5	See Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 18, 1 ff.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
45
which he cleared he recovered about a thousand tablets and a considerable amount of pottery. The seal-impressions which the tablets bore revealed a type of art different from either the Babylonian or Assyrian. A study of the texts informs us that the town in which the house stood was called Nuzi, and that it was in the district of Arapkha, a city mentioned in some of the Assyrian annals, the Arra-pachitis of Ptolemy, and the Arpachshad of the book of Genesis. The tablets were written about 1500 B.C. in the Assyrian language, and, though only the business records of the owners of the house, reveal considerable history of importance.1 The region had been exposed to Assyrian influence, probably through conquest, for the tablets are written in the Assyrian language. The Assyrian exhibits many phonetic peculiarities as well as foreign idioms and is clearly composed by scribes whose native speech was something other than the Assyrian tongue. Fortunately for us the Mitannian letter of Dushratta mentioned above enables us to identify a number of the idioms as Hurri. We have evidence accordingly that the Hurri settlements extended to the east of the Tigris and southward as far at least as the modern Kirkuk.
The discoveries at Ras Shamra, in northern Phoenicia,2 have brought to light a temple or royal library which contained syllabaries of Hurri and Sumerian words, together with poems, one of which bears a colophon3 connecting it with Naqmed, king of Ugarit. The beginning of the colophon is lost, but it probably stated that the tablet belonged to his palace. Since 19074 it had been known that such a kingdom, situated in northern Phoenicia,5 had been the subject of correspondence between Hittite and Babylonian kings. Hurri pottery has been found at Ras Shamra6 and also at Tell Billa,7 about twenty miles east of Mosul. All Hurrian pottery betrays pre-Mycenean kinship.8 It seems, accordingly, that the Hurrians
1	See the article of Chiera and Speiser, “A New Factor in the History of the Ancient East,” in the Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Vol. VI, pp. 80 ff.
2	Cf. Syria, X (1929), 285 ff.; XII, 1 ff. and 195 ff., XIII, 1 ff. and 113 ff.
3	Cf. Syria, XIII, pi. XXVIII.
4	Cf. Winckler, Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, No. 35, p. 24.
5	Cf. L. W. King, History of Babylon, 1915, p. 237, and Sidney Smith, Early History of Assyria to 1000 B.C., pp. 249, 256, 274, and Map No. 4 (B, 2).
6	Cf. Schaeffer in Syria, X, 285 ff., and XII, 1 ff.
7	See, e.g., Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 46, p. 4.
8	This information comes to me from my colleague, Professor E. A. Speiser, who has given much attention to the subject in connection with his excavation of Tell Billa.46
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
had pushed into western Asia Minor, where they came in contact with ¿Egx&n civilization, and were then pushed eastward. At Ugarit (Ras Shamra) they established a kingdom which lasted till about 1300 B.C. They were present at Tell Billa about 1600 B.C. and at Nuzi 1500-1400 B.C.
With the close of the El-Amarna correspondence and the fall of the Hittite dynasty of Boghaz Koi, we lose sight of the Hurri and Mitanni. They were absorbed by the Assyrians, Amorites, Phoenicians, and Aramaeans, among whom the Hurri settled. As will appear at a later point, Hurri blood entered by mixture into two or more important Semitic nations.
THE HITTITES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS
The story of the recovery of a knowledge of the Hittites and of their empire at Hittite-city, the modern Boghaz Koi, is too well known to be repeated here.1 The exploration of the site of their capital city and the recovery of a large archive of cuneiform tablets by Winckler in 1906 is also well known and has been alluded to above. Not only on walls at Boghaz Koi, but in many other places, from Sendjirli, Carchemish, and Marash to Mount Sypilus, have Hittite sculptures been found. While the texts from Boghaz Koi are written in cuneiform, and some of them in Sumerian and Akkadian, the languages of Babylonia, many of the sculptures, which resemble in style and manner of execution those at Boghaz Koi, are accompanied by inscriptions in a peculiar so-called Hittite hieroglyph which has not yet been deciphered.2 Many of them are also accompanied by carvings of human figures which have round heads and aquiline noses.3 It is evident from these pictures that the Hittites belonged to the round-headed people of the north rather than to a stock kindred to the Hamito-Semitic race. On the walls
1	For a brief account of it, see G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., Philadelphia, 1933, pp. 85-100.
2	For examples of these hieroglyphs see L. Messerschmidt, Corpus Inscriptionum
Hettiticarum in the Mitteilungen der vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, 1899, or Cowley’s The Hittites, London, 1920, or Carl Frank, Die sogenannten hettitischen Hieroglyphenin-schriften, Leipzig, 1923. References to many other works will be found in the book cited in the preceding note.	’
3	Many of these are reproduced in Messerschmidt’s Corpus Inscriptionum Hettiticarum, and in Garstang’s The Hittites, London, 1910; Hogarth and Woolley’s Carchemish, London, Pt. I, 1914; Pt. II, 1921; and Pottier’s VArt hittite, Paris, 1927.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
47
of three Egyptian temples Ramses II inscribed an illustrated account of his great battle with Muwatallis, one of the kings of the powerful dynasty that ruled at Hittite-city from about 1400 to 1200 B.C. In picturing the conglomerate army which followed the Hittite king, the Egyptian artist portrayed some whose features and the shape of whose heads resembled those of the Greeks of the classical period, and others with the high cheek bones, the sloping foreheads, and pigtails of the Mongolians.1 These pictures bear contemporary evidence that the allies that made up the Hittite army were composed of people of widely different origin.
The testimony of the artists of Ramses II is now confirmed by the texts from Boghaz Koi, for in those texts there are examples of six languages besides Sumerian and Akkadian. First and most important there is the language of Hittite-city, which we call Hittite, but which has been called Kanish. Most of the material in the tablets not written in Akkadian is written in this tongue. It is an Indo-European language, of the centum, or western Indo-European group, the relationship of which to the other Indo-European languages is hard to define.2 It belongs to neither the Aryan, the Graeco-Latin, the Slavic, the Germanic, or the Celtic group. It seems to have split off from the Indo-European linguistic stem earlier than any of the others. Perhaps we should not call it a sister-language of any of them but a cousin; nevertheless it belongs to the same family and its use in Asia Minor during the period 1400-1200 B.C. seems to prove that western Indo-Europeans had entered Asia Minor at a time anterior to this date. Apparently they gained access to the country around the western end of the Black Sea just as Aryans had entered Mitanni from the north or east.
Kanish was not, however, the original language of the Hittites. In eighteen places in the Kanish texts proverbs are quoted which
1	See Garstang, The Land of the Hittites, New York, 1910, and Barton, Archaeology and the Biblef pi. 10, Fig. 24.
2	For outlines of Hittite grammar, see F. Hrozny, Die Sprache der Hethiter, Leipzig, 1917; Johannes Friedrich, “Die hethitische Sprache,” in ZDMG, Band 76,1922,153-173; E. Forrer, “Die Inschriften und Sprachen des JJatti-Reiches,” ibid., 174-269; G. A. Barton, A Hittite Manual for Beginners in his Hittite Studies, I, Paris* 1928; and E. T. Sturtevant, Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language, Philadelphia 1933. The name “Kanish”, though really inaccurate, is employed in the following pages to avoid the repetition of the clumsy “Indo-European Hittite.”48
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
are said to be hat-ti-li, 'in Hittite.’ Scholars call this language Proto-Hittite, and, from the examples given, it is clear that it was not an Indo-European tongue. The word Hittite means ‘silver-ite.’1 Students of Chinese history are familiar with the fact that some of the Mongol tribes on the north of China took names from metals. Thus we hear of the Liao or ‘Iron’ Tartars, and the Kin or ‘Gold’ Tartars.2 The use of a name derived from a metal, together with the Mongoloid picture on the monuments of Ramses II, strongly tempt one to regard the Proto-Hittites as Mongoloids from central Asia. However this may be, the ruling dynasty at Hittite-city (Boghaz Koi) was Indo-European. At least at that point in Asia Minor an Indo-European people had conquered a non-Indo-European people and was ruling them.
A number of quotations, some 700 words in all, are said to be in the Luyyish language, which has, with considerable probability, been connected with the name Lycaonia and Lycia.3 It was probably the tongue of the people who gave their names to these regions. The tablets containing this language are much broken and many lines are incomplete. From what can be made out of it, Luyyish appears to have been an Indo-European language closely akin to Kanish. The verb-endings are the same as in Kanish, and it forms its medio-passive in the same way. The privileges accorded the Luyyish people in the Hittite laws also indicate a close kinship.4
There are also four or five specimens in the Boghaz Koi tablets of a language called Balish, or Palish. They consist of proverbs and are given in both Balish and Kanish. A number of the Balish words are identical with words in Luyyish and Kanish. It is impossible at present to tell whether these are borrowed, or whether Balish may also be an Indo-European dialect.
Twelve quotations, about 3500 lines in all, are in the Hurri language already mentioned, and four tablets contain bits of the Manda language—a people who seem to have been horse dealers and horse
1	We know this because the name of Hittite-city is often written in the texts with the Sumerian ideogram for silver, thus: aluKU-/i.
2	See, e.g., Gowen’s Outline of Chinese History, Boston, 1917, pp. 131 f.
3	So P. Kretschmer, in Kleinasiatische Forschungen, edited by Sommer and Ehelolf, Weimar, 1927, p. 16.
4	See the code §§5, 19, 20, and 21 in Hrozny’s Code hittite, Paris, 1922, or Barton, Archxology and the Bible} 6th ed., 1933, pp. 406 ff.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
49
trainers. Thus the tablets abundantly confirm the testimony of the sculptures to the presence in Asia Minor at this time of a great mixture of races. All appear, however, so far as we can tell, to have been brachiocephalic.
Excavations at Sakje-Geuze reveal a civilization there which extended back to about 3000 B.C. Doubtless this civilization was that of this mêlée of peoples. The Hittites may not have been present among them at so early a date. A Babylonian chronicle accords the Hittites a part in the overthrow of the first dynasty of Babylon soon after the year 1900 B.C.,1 so that they must have been present in the region of the upper Euphrates for a considerable period before that. Woolley found a change in the type of art at Carchemish before 2000 B.C., which he attributed to the Hittites.2 During the period 1800-1600 they surged southward into Palestine. This was a part of that movement of peoples in western Asia that took the Hyksos into Egypt. Some scholars have even thought the Hyksos Hittites or Hurri. Biblical tradition places a Hittite in Hebron in the days of Abraham,3 and Abdi-Hepa, king of Jerusalem in the reign of Amenophis IV, bore a name the second element of which was the name of a Hittite or Hurri deity.4
At Euyuk, northeast of Boghaz Koi, Hittite sculptures have been found, of an earlier and cruder type than those of Boghaz Koi.5 Perhaps this was a settlement of the Proto-Hittites, whom the Kanish conquered. Then came the great kingdom of Hittite-city at Boghaz Koi, 1400-1200 B.C. Its great sovereign, Subbiluliuma, whose reign fell in the first half-century of this period, made extensive conquests far to the westward in Asia Minor, then eastward, subduing the kingdom of Mitanni on the Euphrates, and southward into Syria, where he came into contact with the Amorites. For a time—a century or more—his successors maintained a considerable portion of the power he had won. This is the period of Hittite history on which the archives of Boghaz Koi are shedding so much
1	See L. W. King, Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonian Kings, London, 1907, II, 22.
2	See Carchemish, Pt. II, by C. L. Woolley, London, 1921, p. 24 f.
3	Genesis, 23:3 ff.
4	See G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., pp. 441-444.
5	See Macridi-Bey, in Mitteilungen der vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, 1908, 3—La Porte des Sphinx a Euyuk.50
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
light. The Luyyish of Lycaonia, Pitassa, a city which appears to have been in Psidia, and Arzawa, a region in southwestern Asia Minor which included the city of Mira (perhaps the later Myra in Lycia), as well as Zippashla,1 a region north of Arzawa, were all subject to Hittite-city. The Luyyish were kindred to the Hittites as we have seen, and so, apparently, were the people of Arzawa. At least a man of Arzawa wrote a letter that is in the El-Amarna collection, and it is in a language practically identical with Kanish.
Whether the inscriptions from Boghaz Koi reveal to us the presence of Ionians or Greeks in western Asia Minor during this time, is a question which must probably be answered in the negative. Forrer has maintained that Achseans, Atreus, and the name Lesbos can be identified in spite of the cumbersome Hittite spelling.2 Friedrich, who is a better Indo-European philologian, has, however, shown3 that of these and other names which were taken for Greek, that of the Achaeans is the only one that will stand philologically, and even that may be something else.
After about 1200 B.C. our sources for Asia Minor fail us. When, some centuries later, Greek sources reveal to us glimpses of this land, other civilizations have submerged the Hittites. Hittite outposts in the east survived longer. At Sendjirli there was a center of Hittite influence until the eighth century, when it succumbed to the Aramaeans.4 Perhaps this was also the case at Hamath. At Carchemish a Hittite or Hurrian kingdom lasted until 717 B.C., when it was finally overthrown by Sargon of Assyria.
THE STONE-AGE MEN OE PALESTINE
The history of man in Palestine began far back in early palaeolithic time. Since 1925 the discoveries of artifacts and skulls of the type
1	See A. Götze, Madduwatas in Mitteilungen der vorderasiatisch-aegyptischen Gesellschaft, 1927, 147-154; also his “Zur Geographie des Hethiterreichs” in Sommer and Ehelolf’s Kleinasiastische Forschungen, 108-114. On the city Mira in Arzawa, see the treaty of Kupanta-Inarash in Barton, Hittite Studies, No. 1. E. Forrer’s argument, Forschungen, Berlin, 1926, pp. 1-72, to show that the Myra referred to lay much further east, is not convincing.
2	See his articles “Vorhomerische Griechen in den Keilschrifttexten von Boghazkoi” in the Mitteilungen der Orient-Gesellschaft, Nr. 69, 1924, pp. 1-22 and “Die Griechen in den Boghazkoi-Texten” in OLZ, 1924, 113-118.
3	Cf. his article “Werden in den hethitischen Keilschrifttexten die Griechen er-wännt?” in Sommer and Ehelolf’s Kleinasiatische Forschungen, I, pp. 87-107.
4	See von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Zendjirli, Berlin, 1893-1911.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
51
of Neanderthal men as well as of earlier types by Turville-Petre, Miss Dorothy Garrod, Père Mallon, M. René Neuville, and T. D. McCown near the Sea of Galilee, at Shuqbah in Samaria, in Wady el-Mugharah and Athlit near Mount Carmel, in Wady Khreitun in Judæa, and at Tuleilat el-Ghassul across the Jordan from Jericho, have revealed that man had an existence in this land in prehistoric time as early as he did in France.1
Before Semites entered Palestine it had also been inhabited for centuries—how many we do not know—by men who were in the neolithic stage of culture. Of this race little is known. In the neighborhood of Amman, east of the Jordan, are remains2 of mega-lithic structures which appear to be their handiwork. Numerous cromlechs, menhirs, dolmens, and “gilgals” or circles of stones standing on end, which are now found east of the Jordan, but once existed in western Palestine also,3 were, perhaps, also their work. The most definite knowledge which we have of the Palestinian men of this period comes from the excavation at Gezer, though the men of Gezer may have belonged to a civilization different from that of the men who made the megalithic monuments. At Gezer the native rock below all the strata of cities was found to contain caves, which had formed the dwellings of these men.4 Some were natural caverns, others had been cut out of the soft limestone rock with flint implements by long and patient toil. Some of these dwellings were adorned with pictures scratched on the walls. Several of these were pictures of cattle and one showed a field of waving grain. One cow appeared to have knobs on her horns to keep her from goring. Another drawing portrayed a stag that was being killed with a bow and arrow. One of the caves appeared to be a temple. In this a number of pig-bones were found—apparently the remains of their sacrifices. The community which occupied these dwellings was clearly composed of an agricultural folk.
A pottery head found in one of the caves, which may have been a
1	For a brief account of these discoveries, excepting those of McCown, which were made in the summer of 1932, see W. F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible, New York, 1931, pp. 60-62.
2	Cf. Mackenzie in the Annual of the Palestine Exploration Fund, I, p. 1 ff.
3	Cf. P. E. Mader in Zeitschrift der deutschen Palästina-Vereins, Vol. XXXVII, 1914, pp. 20-44.
4	Cf. Macalister, The Excavation of Gezer, I, London, 1908, pp. 72-152.52
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
rude portrait of the men of Gezer of this period, possesses a sloping forehead, which afforded comparatively small brain-space, and a protruding lower jaw. In one of the caves which had been employed as a crematorium, the charred remains of a number of bones were found, from which the late Professor Alexander Macalister, of Cambridge University, determined that the men were of small stature, averaging about five feet six inches in height, and that the women were some three inches shorter. No skull bones were discovered sufficiently complete to enable one to determine whether these ancient men were dolichocephalic or brachiocephalic. The sloping forehead and the prognathous jaw, as well as their use of the pig as a domestic animal, show that they were not of the Semitic stock.
Excavations at Jerusalem have brought to light a system of caves about the Ain Sitti Miriam, the Biblical Gihon, that were also inhabited about the same time as the caves at Gezer. No bones or skulls were recovered with which those at Gezer1 could be compared, but similarity of culture as well as synchronism make it extremely probable that the people who dwelt in the caves about this ancient water supply some 5000 years ago belonged to the same race as those at Gezer, since pottery like the earliest from Gezer has been found on the Mount of Olives.2 Similar pottery was also found by Dr. Bade at Tell en-Nasbeh, indicating that the same race had a settlement there also. As will appear later these troglodites were exterminated or absorbed by the oncoming waves of Semites who later overran the country, and thus became one of the elements in the melting pot from which there ultimately emerged the Israelitish nation.
THE EARLY CRETANS
In taking account of the neighboring peoples who might have influenced the development of the Hamites and Semites a word should be said of the civilization which developed in the island of Crete during the neolithic and bronze ages. The remains of this civilization, which reached a remarkably high degree of develop-
1	See Hughes Vincent, Jerusalem sous terre, Paris, 1913, and the Annual of the Pales-ine Exploration Fund, IV.
2	See the work of Vincent cited in the preceding note.NEIGHBORS OF SEMITES AND HAMITES
53
ment, have been found at sites in the eastern half of the island, at Gournia, Phaestos, Hagia Triada, Zakro, Palaikastro, and Knos-sos.1 No evidence that man existed on the island in the palaeolithic period has been discovered, but evidence of a long-continued and slowly developing neolithic civilization is abundant. From about 3000 to 2800 B.C. the Cretan culture passed from the neolithic type to the bronze type, and between 2800 and 1200 B.C., Sir Arthur Evans, whom other scholars follow, distinguishes three distinct periods, each of which falls into three lesser divisions. In the absence of a certain knowledge of what these Cretans called themselves, scholars designate them “Minoans,” a name based on the legend of Minos. The early bronze age period, Early Minoan, corresponds roughly with the period of the Old Kingdom in Egypt; Middle Minoan, with the Egyptian Middle Kingdom; and Late Minoan, with the Egyptian Empire period. Not only these three larger divisions, but the nine smaller periods are distinctly marked by variations in the types of pottery manufactured.2
As Crete was not so far from Egypt that travel thither was impossible, and as at some periods intercourse between the two countries is certain, it becomes a question of some interest to ascertain to what type the ancient Cretans belonged. Fortunately a number of Minoan cemeteries have been excavated and the skulls there found give us some information. Unfortunately the script in which the inscribed objects found in ancient Crete are written has not been deciphered, and we have no linguistic guide to their racial affinities.
The great majority of the skulls found in Crete are dolichocephalic. It seems clear, therefore, that the bulk of the population belonged to the Mediterranean race. Brachiocephalic skulls are, however, not wanting, though comparatively few in number.3 It seems probable, therefore, that immigrants from one of the northern round-headed races had reached Crete in ancient times, and that the Minoans, like other nations of history, arose from the fusion of at least two strands. As the bronze age advanced, brachiocephalic
1	See Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos, London, 1921; Harriet Boyd, Excavations at Gournia, Crete, in Smithsonian Institute Report for 1904; Edith Hall, The Decorative Art of Crete, Philadelphia, 1907.
2	For a brief popular account; see C. H. and H. Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece, New York, 1909.
3	Cf. de Morgan, Préhistoire orientale} III, 153 f.54
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
skulls, rare in the neolithic period, became much more numerous. This was doubtless due to the influx of immigrants from the north. The Minoan civilization, at least during its latest period, spread to the mainland of Greece, where at Mycenae its monuments have been found. Sporadic traces of it have also been found at various points in Asia Minor along the east coast of the Aegean, and as far inland as Sardis. The intercommunication which such archaeological objects imply doubtless brought round-headed peoples into Greece and produced the mixture mentioned. Certain features of the civilization appear to have been similar to that of the Hurri at Nuzi. For example, the bathroom and privy in the sixteenth-century palace at Knossos are quite similar to the similar structures found by Chiera at Nuzi.
About 1200 B.C. a great wave of northern Barbarians moved southward across the Mediterranean. This wave carried Peleshet or Philistines, Denyen (Danaoi), Shekelesh (Sicilians), and others across the sea to Egypt; the Thekel and Philistines to Palestine. These peoples apparently submerged the Minoans, for their civilization became extinct with the dawn of the Iron Age, about 1200 B.C.Ill
THE COMPOSITION OF THE DIFFERENT HISTORIC PEOPLES
THE ARABS
WHEN we speak of the Arabs, we mean the peoples of Central and North Arabia—the Hejaz, the Nejd, and the region between. This portion of Arabia is far more barren than the southwestern portion of the peninsula, and has from time immemorial been much more secluded from outside influences. There is proof that in prehistoric time South Arabia was a highway between Babylonia and Elam and Egypt.1 It is not to be supposed that those who migrated across it or who bore prehistoric commerce left the peoples uninfluenced. Some of the travelers doubtless stayed; they settled down; their stock was absorbed by the Hamito-Semitic stock of the country. These foreign elements produced some slight modification, doubtless, of the stock that had come from the Hamitic cradle-land, Africa. Of these South Arabians something will be said at a later point. At present our thought is confined to North Arabia. The people of this region are of the purest Semitic stock known anywhere in the world. Into the formation of this stock three possible elements may have entered: 1. Descendants of survivors of palaeolithic man who had escaped the floods, which followed the conclusion of the glacial epoch, by taking refuge in high mountains. It is impossible to trace such a strain in the ancestry of the Arabs, but its presence is inherently possible, and, if present, it would help to account for the differentiation of the Arabs from the Hamitic peoples. 2. The Hamitic immigrants from Africa. On the evidence adduced in Chapter I we consider this element of the population certain. It is the dominating element. 3. Refugees who from time to time may have been driven by disasters into Arabia from the surrounding countries. There is no proof of the presence of such refugees except analogy. We know
1 It is possible that in ancient times there was also a highway across northern Arabia; see R. P. Dougherty, The Sealand of Ancient Arabia, New Haven, 1932.
5556
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
that after the destruction of Jerusalem by Hadrian, colonies of Jews took refuge in Arabia, and it is inherently probable that small groups of peoples from outside may from time to time have done the same in the prehistoric period. If such were the case, it is nevertheless true that the Hamitic element from Africa dominated all other strains of ancestry. As centuries passed and Arabia was more and more desiccated, these peoples were forced by the struggle for existence to push out into other lands. Their life was of the simplest sort; they developed nothing that could, in comparison with their neighbors, be called civilization. Such semblance of it as has since flourished in the Arabian oases was stimulated by influences from outside.
SOUTH ARABIANS
In the southwestern corner of Arabia the land is more fertile. The country is of volcanic formation, consisting of extensive uplands, broken by mountain ranges and interspersed with valleys of surpassing richness, where from time immemorial the land has been laid out in terraces, the water of the rainy season is stored in cisterns for irrigation, and many natural rivulets course down the hills.1 These valleys produce wheat, barley, maize, millet, and coffee, as well as palm trees, orange, lemon, quince, mango, plum, apricot, peach, apple, pomegranate, and fig trees. The vine also grows there luxuriantly.2 This is Yemen, the Arabia Felix of the ancients. From this region during the nineteenth century Osiander, Halevy, and Glaser brought back some hundreds of inscriptions which give us knowledge of a high civilization there. As compared with the antiquity of Babylonia and Egypt these inscriptions are comparatively modern. At the highest estimate they reveal to us nothing prior to about 1250 B.C., and it is probable that the kingdom of Main, the earliest of the city-kingdoms concerning which the inscriptions give us information, did not begin until about 1000 B.C. From the sources thus secured, we discern four kingdoms, Main, Saba, Qataban and Hadramaut, and Saba and Raidhan.3
1	See E. Reclus, The Earth and Its Inhabitants, New York, 1885, Vol. IV, p. 438 ff., and S. M. Zwemer, Arabia, the Cradle of Islam, New York, 1900, chs. v and vi.
2	Zwemer, op. cit., p. 57.
3	For a discussion of the chronology of these kingdoms see F. Hommel in Ditlef Nielsen’s Handbuch der altarabischen Altertumskunde, Kopenhagen, 1927, pp. 61-108.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
57
The oldest of these is the kingdom of Main; that of Saba which followed it flourished from about 650 B.C. until 115 B.C. The kingdom of Qatabari and Hadramaut was contemporaneous with the later part of this period. Raidhan was in Africa—a colony of South Arabs who had migrated westward. This kingdom flourished from 115 B.C. until the fifth century A.D. Concerning the social and religious conditions revealed in these inscriptions something will be said at a later point.
In reality we now know that the history of South Arabia reaches much further back. Evidence will be adduced in connection with the sketches of the formation of the nations of Babylonia and Egypt to show that across this country migrations and .caravans had surged two or three thousand years earlier than the date of the earliest inscription from Main. Some of these doubtless left settlers in the land. There is also evidence that Hamites have continued to trickle across the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb into Arabia down to the present time. There must, accordingly, have been a continual infiltration of foreign blood into South Arabia. Doubtless it is this which accounts, at least in part, for the retention in South Arabia of a speech simpler in form than that of North Arabia, and nearer to the norm of the Hamitic languages on the one hand, and to that of the Semitic languages spoken outside of Arabia on the other.
THE BABYLONIANS
The Babylonians were a highly composite race. The fertile alluvium, unprotected by deserts as was Egypt, attracted invaders from every quarter. This appears to have been the case from the time the accumulating detritus brought down by the rivers made the alluvium sufficiently firm to render habitation possible. At Erech, Ur, El-Obeid, Jemdet Nasr, and Fara (Surippak), pits have been sunk to virgin soil,1 while at Tepe Gawra, in ancient Assyria, civilizations, possibly even older, have been laid bare.2 Three dis-
1Cf. Julius Jordan’s Uruk, II and III; Museum Journal, XXII, 193 ff., Erich Schmidt’s article on Fara; Hall and Woolley, Al-Ubaid, London and Philadelphia, 1927, pis. XV-XIX. E. A. Speiser, in American Journal of Archaeology, XXXVI (1932), 465-471. Frankfort, The Sumerians, Table I, and University Museum Bulletin, voi. I, no. 4, pp. 5, 6.
2 Cf. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 47, (Oct. 1932) pp. 20-23.58
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
tinct prehistoric cultures can be traced in these sites, as well as at Susa in the Mountains of Elam.1 The interrelations between Elam and the river countries were close at every period of the history. The earliest of these cultures was characterized by a special type of painted pottery, which has been found at Erech from the virgin soil up through twelve strata of the mound (VII-XVIII): at Ur from virgin soil through two strata; at Gawra, at Nineveh and at El-Obeid.2 This culture dominated the country for an exceedingly long time, as is attested by the twelve strata at Erech—strata which testify to successive destructions and reoccupations of the site. The identity of culture over this large area does not imply identity of race; doubtless the culture was shared by peoples of different origins, as is the case with the culture of modern Europe. This culture was through much of its history a stone-age culture. At El-Obeid no copper was found with this type of pottery; at Warka no copper was found below the eleventh stratum. Pottery of this type was also found at Susa in the lowest stratum (Susa I), but in connection with copper.3 The culture accordingly existed in Babylonia long before it existed in Elam, and was extended to that country only toward the end of the period.
The second period of culture is characterized by a pottery mostly plain. It is represented at Erech by strata V and VI (from the top) ; at Ur by stratum VIII.4 At Ur the pottery was a red ware sometimes burnished and sometimes unburnished; at Erech it was of the red and grey-slipped variety. At Wàrka a temple of this period was found which rested upon a limestone foundation,5 the stone for which had to be brought from a considerable distance. The walls of this temple were crenellated by means of a series of symmetrically spaced niches. It has been rightly thought that the use of stone in this structure was due to the then recent coming of a people from a mountainous region where stone was abundant. A similar temple was found at Gawra in stratum VIII a and b.6 In stratum V at
1	Cf. Délégation en Perse, XIII, and VIII.
2	Cf. Jordan, Uruk, III, 35 f. and Speiser, American Journal of Archaeology, XXXVI, 469 f.
3	Cf. G. Conteneau in Révue (PAssyriologie, 1932, 30 ff. and Speiser in Amer. Journal of Archaeology, XXXVI, 470.
4	Cf. Jordan, Uruk, III, 36, and Speiser, op. cit., p. 470 f.
5	Cf. Jordan, ibid.
6	Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 47, p. 21.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
59
Erech cylinder seals are found for the first time. This culture prevailed for a far shorter length of time than that of the painted pottery which it displaced.
The third predynastic culture of Babylonia (that which immediately preceded the historic dynasties) is represented at Erech by strata II-IV and at Ur by strata III-VII, and by the lowest stratum at Jemdet Nasr.1 In the North it is represented by Gawra VIIIc and VII and at Billa by strata VI and VII. It is characterized by a “chalice ware” of a striking type.2 At Jemdet Nasr tablets written in a very archaic script were found.3 Stratum III at Erech yielded similar tablets, while in stratum IV tablets of a still more picto-graphic type were found.4 Thus toward the end of this long prehistoric period the Babylonians were developing writing. The Sumerians did not appear until shortly before the dawn of history. If they brought with them the plano-convex brick, which was characteristic of their work in the early historic period, it did not appear at Erech until prehistoric stratum II. As will be pointed out below the name Erech (Akkadian Uruk, Arabic Warka) has a good Semitic etymology.5 It is probable that Erech was founded by Semites from Arabia, who had no characteristic culture of their own, but shared that which had been obtained by contacts from the north. Professor Speiser’s arguments for the existence of a third race or mêlée of peoples, different from both Semites and Sumerians as the purveyors, if not the originators of the first prehistoric culture of this region, are, to the writer, convincing.6 It was probably they who built the crenellated temple at Erech on limestone foundations. These people came in successive waves, possibly overrunning not only Elam, but the whole Persian table-land and the Indus Valley. The archaeological remains found in Beluchistan and at Harappa and Maheujo-daro exhibit certain features kindred to those found in Mesopotamian sites, but other features seem characteristically
1	Cf. Uruk, III, 36; Frankfort, Sumerians, Table I, and Speiser, Amer. Jour, of Arch., XXXVI, 467 ff.
2	Cf. Speiser, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 48, pp. 5-10.
3	Cf. Langdon, Pictographic Inscriptions from Jemdet Nasr, in Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts, vol. VII.
4	Cf. Uruk II, pp. 46 and 47, and Uruk III, Taf. 19.
5	Cf. p. 65.
6	Mesopotamian Origins, Philadelphia, 1932.60
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Indian.1 The writer is still of the opinion expressed in 19282 that the civilization of the Indus Valley was produced by a people who entered that land in one of these migrations from Central Asia, although in India their art developed some individual characteristics.
The representatives of the third and last prehistoric Babylonian civilization employed pictures of animals and birds with which to decorate their pottery in Elam and their seals at Jemdet Nasr. Pottery similarly decorated was found at Mohenjo-daro.3 At that site, too, the civilization began in a neolithic stratum and continued through a copper stratum to one of bronze. It was apparently, then, contemporaneous with the three periods of culture found in Babylonia.4
That the originators of these prehistoric cultures were neither Semitic nor Sumerian, is shown by the place-names ending in -ak, which they left behind them in the country. Thus Surippak (which is said to have been old at the time of the flood),5 Larak (to which an antediluvian dynasty is assigned),6 and Akshak (the earliest name of Opis)/ all end in -ak, an ending that appears in several Elamite names, as Shushinak,8 the earliest name of Susa, and Ashnunak.9
1	Cf. Archæological Survey of India, Annual Report, 1922-23, pp. 102-104; 1923-24 pp. 47-54 and pi. XIX; 1924-25, pp. 60-80 and pis. XXII and XXVIII; 1925-26, pp. 72-98; G. A. Barton in the Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, VIII, 79-89 and X, 74-91; and Sir John Marshall’s Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, London, 1931. The discussion of the script on the Indian seals, in the volume last mentioned, is by Langdon. He rightly concludes (vol. II, ch. xxiii) that the writing is not Sumerian, but in a postscript (pp. 453-455) changes his mind, but certainly on insufficient grounds. The writer’s conclusions as to the writing, based on the study of seventy-two seals and published in the Annual already cited, are fully borne out by the thousand seal inscriptions included in Sir John Marshall’s volume. Cf. also Frankfort’s Sumeriansy p. 24 ff.
2	Cf. The Annual y VIII, cited in the preceding note.
3	Cf. Marshall, op. cit.} III, pis. LXXXVII-XCIII.
4	In discussing the evidences of pottery, reliance has been placed on the latest expressions of expert opinion. It seemed unnecessary to cite the earlier opinions of Pottier, Délégation en Perse, XIII, and Révue archéologique, XXIII (1926), or Frankfort’s in his Pottery of the Near East. The new materials brought to light within the last three years have put the whole question in new perspective since those discussions were written.
5	See KB, VI, p. 231.
6	EISA, p. 346.
7	Cf. E. Unger and F. H. Weissbach in ZA, 29, p. 183, Landsberger, in OLZ, XIX, col. 34 f.; also Unger in Reallexicon der Assyriologie, p. 64.
8	RISA, p. 10 f.
9	RISA, p. 152 f.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
61
Awan, which is also said to have been the seat of one of the early dynasties,1 bears a name that is neither Sumerian nor Semitic, but is paralleled by the Elamite name Zawan.2 Finally the name Lagash3 appears as one of the formative elements in the name of Yarlagash,4 a king of Gutium—a people who sprang, as Speiser has shown,5 from the same stock as the Elamites. The name of the rival and frequent enemy of Lagash, Gishkhu6—the city later called Umma— was also of Elamite or Asiatic origin. The whole of it appears in the Elamite name Gugishkha, the only difference being in the final vowel. These names are evidence that the places which bear them were founded, not by Sumerians or Akkadians, but by representatives of this race which came in from the East. In some instances Sumerians and Akkadians, when they occupied one of these sites, changed its name, but in some cases the memory of the older name survived. This happened at Akshak, which the Sumerians called Ukhu, and the Akkadians, Upi7 (Opis). Perhaps one of the oldest settlements of the Elamite or Asiatic race in the North was Sippar, the older form of the name of which was Zimbir,8 which appears to have been neither Sumerian nor Semitic. Another non-Sumerian name, but one adopted by the Sumerians, designated Sippar as utu-kib-nunk 9 The place of abounding sun-fish.’ This name, crystallized in writing, became the ideogram for Sippar among both Sumerians and Akkadians. One reason for thinking Sippar so old is that it gave to the Euphrates its name, that river being designated in Sumerian id-KiB-NUNki,10 ‘The river-of-Sippar/ implying that Sippar was the first settlement along the river. In addition to the testimony of
1	RISA, pp. 346 and 350.
2	RISA, pp. 158 and 160.
3	The signs sir-pur in the name sir-pur-laki (written in the older inscriptions, la-sir-purki) were read as gas; see Deimel, Sumerisches Lexicon, p. 147.
4	RISA, p. 345.
5	Op. cit, p. 97 if.
6	RISA, p. 159.
7	Upi is probably a variant pronunciation of Ufeu, produced by the vocal organs of men of another race than the Sumerians.
8	Cf. V R, 23, 29e.
9	For KIB gamirum, ‘totality’ and pu-uh-rum, ‘assembly’ see Deimel’ Sumerisches Lexikon, p. 228. That the Babylonians knew a fish which they called ‘sun-fish’ is shown by no. 69, i, 5 of Chiera’s Sumerian Lexical Textsfromthe TempleSchool of Nippur, Chicago, 1929.
19 Cf. IV2 R, 14, No. 2, 4a.62
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
the pottery to the presence of this race at Eridu, we have the evidence of what seems to be the oldest name of that place. This name was written NUNki, ‘fish place/1 and must have at one time been so pronounced. In the pictographic tablets from Jemdet Nasr there is a place NUN-KiDki, ‘fish-trap-place’ or ‘fish-net-place.’2
The Sumerian word for ‘fish’ was kha; nun appears to have been the name for fish in the language of the Babylonian section of this race from central Asia. The excavation of R. C. Thompson at Abu Sharein, the site of Eridu, in 1918, confirmed the appropriateness of this name. He found heaps of shells of fresh-water mollusks that had evidently accumulated because of the use of such fish as food.3 When the Sumerians came, they named the city uru-dug,4 ‘good city,’ which in time, by a dialectical change, was corrupted into e-ri-du.5 The Sumerians, however, in writing, employed the orthography of the earlier race, adding a phonetic complement to show that in their tongue it was to be pronounced uru-dug. The result was the spelling which we find in many texts NUNki-GA.6 Thus the name of the city registers the fact that two ancient races made it at different times a habitation, as well as the fact that the central Asiatic race was at Eridu before the Sumerians came.
A similar story is told in an analogous way by the name and orthography of the city of Adab. Its name is written UTU-NUNki,7 which in the language of the central Asiatic race meant ‘sun-fish-place.’7 Like their names for Eridu and Jemdet Nasr, it was to them a fishing-place, and they named it for the kind of fish caught there. When Sumerians occupied the site, they called it a-tab,8 ‘a reservoir’ or ‘canal’—a name which was in time corrupted to Adab. Nevertheless the Sumerians continued to employ the ideographic writing of the previous inhabitants, UTU-NUNki. Later Akkadian scribes
1	The sign NUN is No. 94 in OBW, and, as there shown (Part II, p. 56), originally represented a fish pictured flat-wise.
2	See Langdon, Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts, Oxford, 1928, No. 124; probably also in No. 122, though in this text the determinative ki is omitted.
3	Cf. Archxologia, Vol. XX, London, 1920, pp. 101-144.
4	Cf. IV2 R, 4, 23b and Delitzsch, Parodies, p. 227 ff.
5	Cf. IV2 R, 15*, 13b.
6	Cf. V R, 51, 46b.
7	Cf. V R, 23, 27f.
8	The word was Semitized as atabbu; cf. Muss-Arnolt, Assyrisch-Englisch-Deutsches Handwörterbuch, p. 128a.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
63
explained the name in Semitic as u-tap-sir ap-su,1 ‘it sets free the abyss.’
It was noted above that Lagash derived its name from this Asiatic-Elamite race. It is well known that the Lagash of history was composed of four cities or districts, analogous to the four boroughs of greater New York. These were Girsu, Ninâ, Uruazagga, and Erim. A study of these names reveals the mixed origin of these settlements as known to history. Ninâ, represented by the ideograph was clearly a fishing town, and its name was but a slight corruption of the Asiatic-Elamite nun, ‘fish.’ The syllabaries give the name as Ni-na-a.2 Both the name and the ideogram by which it was expressed are identical with those of Nineveh, later the capital of Assyria. The name of this Assyrian city is sometimes spelled Ni-nu-a,3 which is equal to Nin-wa, in which -wa is the genitive of the Hurri language.4 As the Hurri were later representatives of this same Asiatic race, there can be little doubt but that Nina-a is the genitive of nun, nina-a-ki meaning ‘the place of fish.’5 In Ninâ, the borough of Lagash, we have, then, another of the fish-towns of this primitive Asiatic race.
The name of Girsu, the principal borough of Lagash, is, in the early texts, sometimes written su-gir.6 In later orthography the order of the signs appears to have been transposed, just as the order of the signs in the name Lagash were, su-gir, as was long ago pointed out,6 can also be read sun-gir, a name which is almost identical with Singara, a place in Upper Mesopotamia founded by a later wave of this same Asiatic people. The writer has long held that Sumer, the name by which southern Babylonia was afterward called, is a corruption of this name.7 Whether, however, the name
1	Cf. CT, XI, 35, 27a.
2	Cf., e.g., Ill R, 17, 62 and V R, 10, 51.
3	Cf. I R, 19, 101.
4	Cf. Forrer in ZDMG, LXXVI (1922), p. 226.
5	A later syllabary gives the Sumerian pronunciation of this name as Nanshe (cf. Deimel, Sumerisches Lexikon, p. 421—no. 200,11). This I take to be a foreign corruption of nammasse; cf. Ch. VIII., p. 256.
6	Cf. de Sarzec, Découvertes en Chaldee, p. XXXVI, No. 4, and RISA, p. 18, No. 8.
7	Cf. Semitic Origins, p. 192, nl, and JAOS, XLIX (1929), p. 263, nl. Deimel’s suggestion, Sumerische Grammatik, 1, that Sumer may have been corrupted from KI-EN-GI, seems to me even more violent that the famous quip about deriving ‘Middletown* from ‘Moses’ by leaving off ‘oses’ and adding ‘iddletown’.64
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Girsu is of Sumerian or of Asiatic origin, the elements of its religion are all traceable to Sumerian origins.1 In the historic period, therefore, Girsu was a Sumerian town or borough. The same may be said of Uru-azagga, which appears to have been a sort of Haram-area within the city of Girsu.
ERiMki, the name of the fourth borough of Lagash, appears to have been of Semitic origin. Its goddess was En-nin2 (Ininni, Ishtar) and the name itself was probably derived from the Arabic 'arim, meaning ‘dam/ ‘water-spout/ ‘inundation/ etc. In the boroughs of Lagash, therefore, we have represented separate settlements of the three principal races which mingled in the Babylonian melting pot.
Before turning from this Asiatic race one other place-name must be noticed, that of Nippur. It is uniformly written EN-LiLki, ‘Enlil-place/ or ‘Lord of-wind-place.’ This god, who is lord of the wind, has long been supposed to be a Sumerian deity, but he is the one god who can be clearly identified in the tablets from Jemdet Nasr,3 and it is now probable that he was the weather-god of the pre-Sumerian Asiatics, who was widely worshipped in the country before the coming of the Sumerians. If so, EN-LiLki was founded before the coming of the Sumerians by this earlier people. In time he was universally worshipped by the Sumerians, as Yahweh was, at a much later time, by foreigners settled in Samaria, because he was the god of the land. The name Nippur is a Semitic (Akkadian) name, meaning ‘crossing’ or ‘ferry.’ There must have been a ford or ferry across the Euphrates at that point, and the fact that in later time the place was always known by this name, indicates that, next after the Asiatic-Elamites, the place was occupied by Semites. We know from later texts that it was occupied by Sumerians. Thus we can trace at Nippur the succession Asiatic-Elamites, Akkadians, Sumerians, of which the Sumerians are third.
At least one other seat of Semitic Akkadians in Babylonia appears to be older than the coming of the Sumerians, and that is Erech.
1	See Ch. VIII, p. 247 f.
2	See Ch. VIII, p. 237 f.
3	Cf. Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts, VII, No. 33, rev. i, 3, and No. 73, ob, iii, 2. For a refutation of Langdon’s theory that An (Anu), the sky-god, was worshipped at Jemdet Nasr, {Semitic Mythology, Boston, 1931, pp. 89-94), see Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. XXIII, p. 82 f., (July, 1933).COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
65
The name of the city is written UNUGkV afterward pronounced Uruk, which, by a slight change became the biblical Erech. The modern Arabic name of it is Warka, which clearly points to the etymology of the original form of the name, since in Arabic waraka means ‘stay’ or ‘abide.’ UNUGki, in early Semitic, meant accordingly ‘The dwelling-place.’ The principal deity at Erech was the Semitic goddess Ashdar, later called Ishtar. Her presence, together with the name, identifies the settlement as Semitic. As already pointed out, the excavations at Erech have demonstrated the extreme antiquity of the site. This is also vouched for by the antediluvian king-lists, and the traditional role of its hero Gilgamesh. Possibly the original settlement was made by the Asiatic race, but, if so, the Semites displaced them at so early a time that the Asiatic name for the place has disappeared.
Into this land, invaded from the east by successive waves of this Asiatic-Elamite race, and from the west by Semites, Sumerians from the south penetrated some time during the fourth millennium, before 3000 B.C. or earlier. That they came from the south is inferred from various phenomena. They held, during their period of supremacy, the cities of southern Babylonia only; for clothing, they wore only a skirt covering the lower part of the body, leaving the chest nude, and, for the performance of priestly offices, went entirely nude,2—a custom which perpetuates (since religion is always conservative) the habits of a country still warmer than Babylonia. Whence they came we do not know. India has been suggested, and the discoveries at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro have been thought by some to confirm this conjecture. It has, however, been conclusively shown that the civilization of the Indus Valley represented by the discoveries in question is not Sumerian.3 At
1	Cf. II R, 50, 50-60b., and Delitzsch’s Parodies, p. 221.
2	Cf. Hilprecht, Old Babylonian Inscriptions, pi. XVI.
3	See the writer’s article “On the So-called Sumero-Indian Seals” in the Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Vol. VIII, 79-95, and the comparative sign-list in Vol. X, 74-91. With the view stated in the text most of the contributors to Sir John Marshall’s great work, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, London, 1931, agree. The results of the examination of the skulls found at Mohenjo-daro indicate a great mixture of races in the population; see vol. II, ch. xxx, especially pp. 638-644, but the dominant element in the civilization was apparently contributed by what we have called the Central Asiatic race. The results of the tentative decipherment of the Mohenjo-daro inscriptions by Dr. Pran Nath in the Indian Historical66
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
the most, it was, at one period of its history, in commercial contact with the Sumerians. The present writer has conjectured that the Sumerians came from Oman, or from some point on the Persian Gulf.* 1 While this cannot at present be proved, it seems, from our present knowledge, their most probable home-land. When the Sumerians entered the country, they were already highly civilized.
At Eridu and Ur they were able to gain a foothold. Woolley feels certain that their predecessors had been driven from the region by the flood celebrated in Babylonian poetry and in the Old Testament, which deposited the detritus found separating the painted pottery from traces of Sumerian occupation,2 but other and less extensive inundations may have accounted for the deposit. A local flood, or even the temporary change of the bed of the Euphrates, would be sufficient to have caused it.
In course of time the Sumerians, as we have seen in studying place-names, forced their way into settlements which their predecessors had founded. It becomes an interesting question whether they were already mingling with the Asiatic-Elamite race at Jemdet Nasr, when the pictographic tablets found there were written. Lang-don is of the opinion that those texts are Sumerian.3 If, however, two races mingled, each with a language of its own, and each developing a system of writing, the Sumerian of a later time—our classical Sumerian—would be formed by a mingling of the two elements, just as our modern English is a fusion of Saxon and Norman strands. In the judgment of the present writer, that is what happened in Sumerian. The Asiatic-Elamites and the Sumerians employed the same pictographs, each pronouncing the word indicated differently, in accordance with the name of the thing or the action in his own tongue. In course of time all these (or many of them) merged in the Sumerian syllabary, producing that puzzling polyphony of sounds, the explanation of which has been the despair
Review, Calcutta, 1931, Vol. VI, entitled “The Scripts of the Indus Valley Seals,” are too uncertain to permit one to lay any historical stress upon them. He finds many Indian elements in them, but also Akkadian elements, such as the god Sin! It is the belief of the present writer that the inscriptions on these seals are not yet deciphered.
1	Cf. the writer’s article, “Whence came the Sumerians?” JAOS, XLIX. 263 ff.
2	See his article in The Antiquaries Journal, October, 1929, pp. 323 ff.
3	Cf. Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts, Vol. VII, p. viii.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
67
of scholars. In the writer’s judgment that lies in this twofold origin, and it is the explanation of what seem to be Sumerian elements in the tablets from Jemdet Nasr.
Take, for example, the name en-kud-du, which occurs in No. 11 of the Jemdet Nasr tablets:1 it seems to be good Sumerian from the point of view of the later Sumerian usage. Suppose, however, that the phrase is from the pre-Sumerian, Asiatic-Elamite tongue. In that case it would follow that the value kud of this polyphonous sign, (which could also be pronounced has, tar, sil, sila,2 and kurum), was borrowed in Sumerian from mixture with this earlier people. Similarly the value du, of another polyphonous sign, employed in this name as a phonetic complement, would also have been adopted by the Sumerians from the same source. In the case of the last-mentioned sign, which ordinarily in Sumerian has the values, gub, gin, ra, and tum,3 but seldom, in the older texts, the value du except as a phonetic complement, would be explained. Similarly the names en-lil-til4 and en-lil-mas-til4 may be Sumerian, but they may also belong to the pre-Sumerian language. If Sumerians were present at Jemdet Nasr, when these texts were written, they were in a minority. The art is clearly of the pre-Sumerian type. It seems probable, however, that they were not yet present, but that these names represent Asiatic-Elamite elements which survived in later Sumerian speech.
Whether Sumerians were or were not at Jemdet Nasr, they founded some towns in Babylonia which bear good Sumerian names. Cutha, the earliest form of which is spelled gu-du, ‘High-bank’ (or possibly ‘Brick-kiln-bank’), is a good Sumerian name. So also is Kisurra, the name of which is the ordinary Sumerian word for ‘boundary-ditch.’ Similarly Borsippa, (originally bar-sib, ‘Sanctuary of the Shepherd’) is a good Sumerian name.
A much later wave of Semites than those who founded Erech founded the city of Kish. Still later waves founded also the cities of Agade, Arar (later called Larsa), overran Gishkhu and renamed it Umma, and also founded Babylon. There seems little doubt but
1	See Langdon, op. cit.
2	Cf. OBW, No. 12.
3	Cf. OBW, No. 207.
4	Langdon, op. cit., No. 73.68
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
that Babylon is a Semitic foundation in spite of the Sumerian form in which its name is usually written.1 Whether Mari, which was situated on the Euphrates north of Sippar, bears a Sumerian or a Semitic name, is in doubt.2
Speiser has demonstrated3 that successive waves of this Asiatic-Elamite race invaded Babylonia throughout its history. Lulubi, Guti, people of Elam, Emutbal, and Kossæans were all successive waves of this same stock. One city in southern Babylonia seems to have reversed the history of most of the towns whose names we have studied. It was, apparently, founded by Semites, who built there a temple to the sun-god, and named it Arar,4 occupied later by Sumerians, who called it from this temple utu-üm-ma,5 ‘Dwelling of the sun/ and finally, about 2200 B.C., occupied by people from western Elam, it was named Larsa.6
A study of the names of the cities of ancient Babylonia confirms the inferences from the pottery and from other sources that at least three distinct races were fused in the melting pot of ancient Babylonia.7 Of these the Asiatic-Elamites and the Akkadians appear to have been the earlier. The Sumerians might be counted the latest of the three, but for the fact that the Semitic Akkadians were constantly renewed from Arabia. The later history of Babylonia has been well told in several books;8 it would be beyond the scope of this work to retell the story here.
1	The name is usually written KA-DINGIR-RA, ‘Gate of god’—the Sumerian equivalent of Bab-ili. In business documents of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods it is often written TIN-TIRki, the Sumerian for ‘Life-forest/ even in purely Akkadian texts. Both these Sumerian writings are, I think, concessions to the feeling that Sumerian was a more cultured or a more sacred language. For the possibility of an earlier Central Asiatic settlement here, see below, Ch. VIII, p. 272.
2	Mari can be read as Semitic and understood to mean ‘The Master’s,’ or, as Sumerian MÀ-Ri, ‘Ship-receiver,’ or ‘Haven.’
3	Mesopotamian Origins.
4	Cf. V R, 23, 30e, where a-ra-ar is read erroneously za-ra-ar. The name means, ‘heat,’ ‘glow.’
5	For the reading UM instead of UNUG, when followed by MA, cf. JAOS, XLVI, 310 f.
6	Cf. Délégation en Perse, V, 43 (col. viii, 18) for la-ar, an ancient Elamite word. Its meaning is not determined. The syllable sa is an Elamite ending of unknown meaning.
7	As the evidence has been so convincingly brought together by Speiser in his Mesopotamian Origins, it seems unnecessary to labor the point further here.
8	Cf. L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, London, 1910; also his History of Babylon, London, 1915; R. W. Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, New York,COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
69
The race which we have designated as Asiatic-Elamite or Central Asiatic not only furnished the primal element in the race-mixture which constituted the later Babylonians, but received, in the course of later Babylonian history, reinforcements from subsequent invasion of the country. The people of Gutium, which furnished a dynasty to Babylonia that ruled the country for 125 years about the middle of the third millennium B.C., and the Kassites, whose dynasty ruled the country for 576 years—a much longer period than that covered by the rule of any other line—were, as Speiser has shown,* 1 both offshoots of this Central-Asiatic stock. While, therefore, the culture of the country during the historic period was dominated first by the Sumerians and then by the Akkadians, each of whom in turn imposed their language on the country, it would appear that at all periods of Babylonian history a large element (perhaps the major element) of the racial stock belonged to the Asiatic race which in successive waves entered Mesopotamia from the east, and which had overrun Elam before the Babylonian alluvium was fit for human habitation.
THE AKKADIANS
We must now consider in somewhat more detail the origin of the Semitic element in earliest Babylonian history and its relation to the other Semitic peoples. The Akkadian language makes it evident that its originators were not only Semites, but that they belonged (at least so most scholars think) to the northern group of Semitic peoples. As noted in a previous chapter,2 it has generally been assumed by scholars that the ancestors of all the Northern Semites lived together in some secluded part of North Arabia after they separated from the ancestors of the Southern Semites. The present writer has, however, come to think that this theory rests on an insecure foundation. The broken plural, which some have taken as the distinguishing mark between the North and South Semitic languages is not, in the judgment of the present writer, the reliable criterion it is supposed to be.3 Collective nouns, which
1915: The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. I, New York, 1924; and Sidney Smith, Early History of Assyria to 1000 B.C., London, 1928.
1	Mesopotamian Origins.
2	Chapter I, p. 28.
3	So Worrell, Study of Races in the Ancient Near East, p. 12 f.70
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
are in reality inner plurals, are not unknown in what are usually counted as North Semitic languages, and the development of the more elaborate forms of inner plurals in South Semitic may be a later phenomenon, or due to local peculiarities. On the other hand, Akkadian contains some features which link it with South Arabic. The use of su and sa as the pronouns of the third person (in the inscriptions of the dynasty of Agade, su and sa),1 identical with those of Minaean, a strong argument for considering the Akkadians as emigrants from South Arabia. Many of the other phenomena of Akkadian grammar point in the same direction. The intercourse between Babylonia and South Arabia seems always to have been close, and in later times the art of the latter country was influenced by that of the former.2 We are led, accordingly, to regard the Akkadians as the earliest traceable offshoot of the primitive Semitic stock which migrated from the Semitic cradle-land. Advanced groups of Akkadians were in Babylonia as soon as the alluvium would permit the building of habitations. We have already traced them at Erech, in the very earliest period; at Nippur, where they renamed the town of the Asiatic-Elamite Enlil, and still later at Kish, where there ruled a king, Enbi-Ashdar (“The-fruit-of Ashtar”).3 Still later came the wave of Akkadians which founded the dynasty of Agade and Kish, in the inscriptions of whose kings we have the earliest extended examples of written Semitic speech which have as yet been discovered. It is not certain that these successive waves of Akkadians all spoke the same dialect of Semitic, but, on account of the limitations of our knowledge, we class them all together. On the whole it seems probable that the dialect which we find in the inscriptions of the dynasty of Agade (Sargon, Rimush, Manishtusu, Naram-Sin, and Shargali-sharri) had been gradually differentiated from the speech of the South Arabs by extended contact with the Sumerians and the still earlier Asiatic population of Babylonia. Such syntactical likenesses to Sumerian as the placing of the verb at the end of the sentence (a decidedly un-Semitic peculiarity) could not have been produced in Akkadian without the lapse of considerable time. Such considerations afford some ground for
1	See RISA, p. 100 £f. After verbs, the fem. was si.
2	Cf. Ditlef Nielsen’s Handbuch der altarabischen AUertumskunde, pp. 143-176.
3	Cf. RISA, p. 6.	*COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
71
thinking that the language of the chronicles of Sargon and his successors had not been recently imported from Arabia, either by them or their immediate ancestors, but had been wrought out in Babylonia by the earlier waves of Semitic settlers and adopted by the later comers.
THE AMORITES
One of the most important, but one of the most elusive, of the Semitic peoples was the Amorites, whose land was in Akkadian called Amurru. In Sumerian the land was designated kur mar-tu or kdrMAR-TUki or MAR-TUki, all of which seem to mean “The land of the entering in of the chariot (of the sun)” or, “The west-land.” The term was applied to the country which stretched up the Euphrates westward to the Lebanon mountains and the Mediterranean coast-land. In Sumerian the Amorites were called lu MAR-TUki, “Men of the west-land,” which was clearly not their racial name. In the Old Testament, where they are mentioned several times, (see, e.g., Gen. 15:16; 48:22; Deut. 20:17; and Josh. 10:12), they are called Amori, which is clearly the Hebrew equivalent of the Akkadian Amurru. These designations probably, therefore, give us a clue to the national name of this people. The J document in the Old Testament regards the Amorites as the pre-Hebrew population of Palestine, though the E document calls them Canaanites. At the time of the Hebrew conquest, an Amorite kingdom existed to the east of the Dead Sea (see Nu. 21:21 if.); and earlier, during the period covered by the El-Amarna letters, an Amorite kingdom existed in the region of the Lebanon Mountains and northern Galilee.1 It is clear, accordingly, that the habitat of the Amorites was in the region to the west of Babylonia, including the Mediterranean coast-lands. While they were displaced before they became sufficiently civilized to produce anything that can be called literature,2 their proper names present certain characteristics which
1	See Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln, nos. 158 and 164, and J. Friedrich, Staats-vertrdge des Hatti-Reiches in hethitischer Sprache, Leipzig, 1926, pp. 1-48.
2	It seems unnecessary here to mention Clay’s theory of an Amorite empire in the fourth milennium B.C., which he believed to have enjoyed a high civilization. Those wishing to acquaint themselves with it should consult his books: Amurru, the Home of the Northern Semites, 1909; The Empire of the Amorites, 1919; A Hebrew Deluge Story in Cuneiform, 1922; and The Origin of the Biblical Traditions, 1923. For criticisms72
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
enable us to discern that they contributed elements to both the Babylonian and Hebrew civilizations that were of great importance.
The characteristic by which Amorites may be identified in the various parts of the Semitic world is the element 'Amm- (sometimes in Akkadian Hamm-, as in Hammurabi)—an element which in these names takes the place usually occupied in the names of other Semitic peoples by the name of a god. Thus among the Hebrews we have 'Ammi-nadab (Ex. 6:23; Ruth 4:20) and 'Ammi-nadib (Cant. 6:12) —names which clearly survived from the Amorite strain in the Hebrew ancestry. In Akkadian we have not only Hammurabi, but Ammi-ditana, Ammi-zaduga, and Ammi-bail, kings of Babylon and Khani, and many others.1 It is a significant fact, the importance of which has never been fully appreciated by scholars, that among the Qatabanians in South Arabia the element 'Amm- not only enters into the composition of proper names in a similar way, but 'Amm is among them actually a deity—the special deity of the tribe.2 As the element 'Amm in the proper names preserved to us in Akkadian and Hebrew occupies the position and fulfils the function which in other Semitic proper names is occupied and fulfilled by the name of a deity, it is altogether probable that 'Amm was also the tribal deity of the Amorites. The fact that in Akkadian the determinative for deity is not always present in these names is not a conclusive argument against this. 'Amm means ‘people/ ‘kinsfolk.’ The god 'Amm was, accordingly, the deified tribe personified. The
of the theory see the present writer’s article, “The Antiquity of the Amorites,” in JAOS, voi. XLV, 1925, and his Archxology and the Bible, 4th and 5th editions (1925 and 1927, pp. 535-543).
In like manner it seems unnecessary to refute here Theo. Bauer’s theory that MAR-TUki lay, in the time before the first dynasty of Babylon, in the lands east of the Tigris; (see his Die Ostkanaander, Leipzig, 1926, p. 89). Since MAR-TUki meant “west-land,” it may have been employed in the inscriptions of Kudurmabug to designate Emutbal, the western district of Elam, or, as Schnabel has suggested, it may, in the inscriptions of this Elamite prince, have been a name for Babylonia, which lay to the west of Emutbal. In any event, the evidence adduced in the text shows that the Amorites were scattered far over the West and that waves of them entered Babylonia, not from the East, but from the South. For a sane and wise discussion of the material see Honig-mann’s article “Amurru” in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie, edited by Ebeling and Meissner, p. 99 ff. See also Additional Note at the end of this book.
1	For a partial list of them see Clay, Proper Names of the Cassite Dynasty, p. 54, and Bauer, op. cit.t p. 13 f.
2	See N. Rhodokanakis, Katabanische Texte, Wien, 1919, passim, and Nielsen, op. cit., p. 193.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
73
important point for the purpose of our present inquiry is that the presence of this personified tribe as a deity among the Amor-ites and the Qatabanians indicates that they were sprung from the same stock. Nowhere else in the Semitic world, so far as we know, was the 'amm deified. It follows, accordingly, that either the Qatabanians were an offshoot of the Amorites which penetrated into South Arabia from the North, or the Amorites were an offshoot of the Qatabanians and had their origin in South Arabia. Which of these alternatives should we choose? It seems probable that we should choose the second, and look for the home land of the Amorites in South Arabia. While other reasons for this choice will appear as we proceed, a decisive one seems to be the following Babylonian date formula: “The year when to Ibi-Sin, king of Ur, the Amorites, a southern tribe who never knew a city, surrendered.It follows from this earliest known reference to the coming of the Amorites that they came from a country which lay south of Ur, which was itself almost the southernmost point of Babylonia. South Arabia, where in later times we find the Qatabanians, fulfils this condition. Ibi-Sin ruled from 2307-2282 B.C. His date has now been fixed by astronomy.2 Thus the Amorites first appear in history about 2300 B.C. It is agreed by practically all scholars that the first dynasty of Babylon, to which Hammurabi belonged, was of Amorite origin. This dynasty arose between 2100 and 2050 B.C. It seems probable, therefore, that the Amorites, repulsed by the Sumerians in South Babylonia, found an entrance into North Babylonia, possessed themselves of the city of Babylon, and in due time founded a dynasty which, under its greatest king, Hammurabi, made itself master of the whole land. Uncultured themselves, they adopted the culture and to a good degree the language of the people whom they conquered.
What the Sumerians thought of these newcomers is revealed in the following passage from a Sumerian text:
On the mountain the weapon is his companion,
To catch meat he crosses over the mountain,
What is good he does not know;
He eats uncooked meat,
1	Published by L. Legrain in The Museum Journal, December, 1926, p. 379; cf. G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 5th ed., p. 564.
2	See Langdon and Fotheringham, The Venus Tablet of Ammizadugga, 1928, p. 82.74
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
While he lives he has no house,
His dead companion he does not bury,
In the land (?) his protector (?) is the god Amurru.1
Though they were uncultivated huntsmen when they emerged from Arabia, some of them had in two centuries assimilated all the culture of Babylonia, as the history of Hammurabi proves.
A glimpse of Amorites living on the border of Egypt between 1970 and 1800 B.C. is obtained from the Egyptian story of Sinuhe.2 Sinuhe sojourned at the court of Emiuenshi, prince of Upper Rutennu. Upper Rutennu is the Egyptian name for Palestine, and Emiuenshi is regarded by scholars generally as the Amorite name Ammi-anshi3—a name closely paralleled in the Qatabanian inscriptions.4 Here, then, we have evidence from an extra-biblical source that Amorites were in Palestine. The description of the Palestinian agriculture, the vines and figs, the flocks and herds, shows it to have been in much the same condition that it presented later in the Hebrew period.
From the study of Amorite proper names Theo Bauer has deduced certain facts about the language of the Amorites.5 The imperfect 3rd singular of the verb was formed by the prefix y, and the causative stem of the verb appears to have been formed with the letter h. Both these formations are identical with the usage of Hebrew in later time. Another indication which points in the same direction comes from the inscriptions found at Serabit el-Kha-dem in the peninsula of Sinai. These inscriptions, discovered by Petrie in 1906,6 were first identified as alphabetic Semitic by Alan H. Gardiner.7 Their interpretation has been advanced by Cowley,8
1	Published by Chiera, Sumerian Religious Texts, 1924, No. 8 and pp. 14-23; cf. also Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 4th and 5th eds., p. 539.
2	For translations cf. Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt, I, 237 ff., and Erman, The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians, London, 1927, p. 14 ff.
3	Erman {op. cit.,p. 17) curiously reads Nenshi, son of Amu, evidently taking Emiu as the Egyptian Amu, ‘Asiatic.’ The texts, however, as usually published, seem to me to favor rather the other reading.
4	Cf. D. Nielsen, Neue kataboriesche Inschriften (MVAG, 1906), p. 274.
5	Die Ostkanaander, p. 62 ff. See also Additional Note at the end of this book
6	Researches in Sinai, London, 1906; cf. Syria, V, 135 ff.
7	Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, III, pp. Iff.
8	Ibid., pp. 17 ff.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
75
Sethe,1 and Butin.2 Two facts of importance have, I think, been made probable by these scholars, if not fully established. 1. These inscriptions exhibit Egyptian hieroglyphic character in process of being transformed into an alphabet. 2. The language of the inscriptions is practically identical with the Hebrew of a later time. With these facts we should couple the fact already mentioned that Amorites were in Palestine in the time of Sinuhe, just the time when, in the opinion of Sethe and Butin, the inscriptions of Serabit el-Khadem were written. All these facts make it probable that the Sinai inscriptions were written by Amorites, and that, uncultured though they were when first they poured from Arabia into Babylonia, they were the real inventors of the alphabet, and, by that one invention, made one of the greatest contributions to civilization ever made by any people.
That the Amorites should have originated in South Arabia, and yet have spoken a language practically identical with later Hebrew, is not so unthinkable as it may at first appear, for the dialects of Saba and of the Qatabanians are much more akin to Hebrew than northern Arabic is.3
The facts at present known to us indicate, therefore, that the Amorites were offshoots of a South Arabian tribe, and that they poured forth from that country in successive waves in an uncivilized state, that they gained a foothold in northern Babylonia, where they adopted the civilization and the language of the Akkadians, furnished the first dynasty to the city of Babylon (these Amorites being absorbed in the Babylonian melting-pot), that they swept westward occupying various points in the country between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, including Palestine, that they spoke a language indistinguishable, so far as the scanty remains of it reveal it to us, from Hebrew, that they invented the alphabet, and that (the evidence for this will appear later) their language
1	ZDMG, LXXX (1926), pp. 24 ff.
2	Harvard Theological Review, xxi, p. 9.
3	Cf. the following points: The smaller number of verbal stems (Ground stem, Intensive, Causative, three reflexives, Causative reflexive, and Niphal), in which it is much more similar to the Hebrew than to the Arabic system (Cf. Hommel, Sud-arabis-che Chrestomatie, Munich, 1893, p. 18 ff.); the n-Causative, Hiphil as against the Arabic Aphala, in Sab^ean (Hommel, p. 19); the Niphal (Hommel, p. 21); the pronouns, especially the relative pronouns (Hommel, p. 13 ff.).76
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
became so firmly established in Palestine that it was later adopted by the non-Amorite Hebrews, by whom the Palestinian portion of the Amorite people was absorbed.
THE ASSYRIANS
On the west side of the Tigris River, about halfway between the points at which, on the eastern side, the Upper Zab and Lower Zab flow into it, was situated the ancient city of the god Ashur. Its ruins are now called Kalat-Shergat. Ashur was, apparently, not its original name, but a name given it by its Semitic population after they had conquered it. Its earlier name was apparently a-tjsar, Water net.’1 It was one of the many fishing points of the race from central Asia. There appears also to have been a ferry there, for one of its old names was bal-idim-ki,2 Tlace for crossing the deep.’ The Sumerians called it urtj-sag uru,2 ‘City within a city,’ probably because of its fortified citadel.3 The Assyrians correlated the first of these names to that of their tree god, Ashur. The language spoken by the Assyrians of history was a Semitic language, showing that the dominant strain in the people who made Assyrian history was Semitic. This people established at Ashur a city state, which conquered the surrounding country, as Rome conquered Italy. Thus the land of Assyria originated. Still later the kings of the land of Assyria conquered large sections of Western Asia and established the Assyrian empire. In this there is a striking analogy to the establishment of the Roman empire.
The whole region of the land of Assyria was, as the researches of Chiera and Speiser have shown,4 inhabited by representatives of the Central Asiatic-Elamite race, whose remains have been brought to light at Nuzi and Tepe Gawra. This race had long been in possession of the land, when the city of Ashur became Semitic. In the
1	See below, ch. VIII, p. 275.
2	Cf. Sidney Smith, Early History of Assyria to 1000 B. C., London, 1928, p. 104.
3	Cf. Andrae, Festungswerke von Ashur, Leipzig, 1913.
4	Cf. Chiera and Speiser, “A New Factor in the History of the Ancient East,” Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Vol. VI; Speiser, “Preliminary Excavations at Tepe Gawra,” ibid., Vol. IX, and Speiser, Mesopotamian Origins, Philadelphia, 1930.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
77
middle of the third millennium B.C. it was the land of the Guti,1 who conquered Babylonia and supplied to that country a dynasty which controlled it for at least a century and a quarter. Sumerian conquerors pushed their arms up the Tigris, and it is not strange that examples of Sumerian art were found by Andrae at Ashur in strata estimated to come from about 3000 B.C.2 Apparently the people of this region had at this early time developed no system of writing, for, when they wrote at all, they adopted the script of Babylonia.
The presence of this non-Semitic race in Assyria, together with the fact that Assyrian is a Semitic language, makes it clear that the Assyrians of history arose from a fusion of two races. The Semitic conquerors blended with the Asiatic race which was already in the land. Two questions arise concerning the Semitic element in Assyria: How early were they in the land? And, Whence did they come?
As to the first of these, Sidney Smith thinks it anterior to the time of Sargon of Agade, whom he dates about 2600 B.C.3 Speiser, on the other hand, because of the discovery of an archaeological representation of a circumcised phallus in Tepe Gawra II, infers that Semites related to the West Semites were present in the country in the Stone Age before the introduction of metal.4 It was formerly generally assumed that the Semitic Assyrians were colonists of Akkadians from Babylonia.5 This assumption apparently rested on the similarity of the Assyrian and Akkadian dialects. It has been rightly questioned by Sidney Smith, on the ground that the Assyrian calendar differs from the Babylonian in a way that would hardly be possible, if the Assyrians came from that country, that the Assyrian laws reveal the fact that Assyrian social institutions-differed radically from the Babylonian, and that the system of dating by the limmu is non-Babylonian.6 Smith, who on insufficient grounds,
1	Cf. “Assyrien” by E. Forrer in Ebeling and Meissner’s Reallexikon der Assyri-ologie.
2	See Andrae, Die archäischen Ischtar-Tempel zu Ashur, Tafel 39; cf. Sidney Smith, op. cit., ch. VI.
zOp. cit., p. 114.
4	Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, IX, p. 48 f.
5	Cf. e.g., R. W. Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria, 6th ed., II, 133.
6	Early History of Assyria to 1000 B.C., ch. VIII.78
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
doubts the Arabian origin of the Assyrians, suggests North Syria and eastern Asia Minor as the land whence they came. There is, however, no evidence that Semites as such ever originated in that quarter, and the theory overlooks that linguistic evidence cited in chapter I, which connects the Semites with Africa.1 A more satisfactory theory would seem to be that the original Semitic population of this region were a part of that Semitic succession of immigrations which in prehistoric times, surging up from Arabia, found their way into Babylonia. Some of them gaining a foothold in Babylonia, became Akkadians; others, gaining a foothold here and there among the representatives of the Central Asiatic race already in the land, became ancestors of many of the later Assyrians. These were at Tepe Gawra in the Stone Age. Scattered widely over the land, their dialect developed its differences from Akkadian. It is noteworthy that the rise of the city of Ashur to power coincides with the rise of the first dynasty of Babylon to power. Evidence has already been presented to show that that dynasty was Amorite. It is not impossible that the Semites who captured the city of uru-sag-urtj or bal-idimki and changed its name to Ashur were a part of this same Amorite horde which failed to gain a footing in Babylonia, and that they adopted the language of the more civilized Semites who were already in the land, just as the Amorites who at this time, invading Babylonia, adopted the language of the more civilized Akkadians. If this were true, a reason for the adoption of the language of the early settlers (which we now call Assyrian) might be seen in the fact that the custom of writing was being introduced from Babylonia, and that Assyrian, on account of its kinship with Akkadian, lent itself more easily to the use of this script. An Amorite element in Assyria can, however, be regarded as no more than a possibility, and the fact that names containing the element xamm- are not found among the names of the early rulers of Ashur militates against the theory.
Whether the first Semitic conquerers of the city of Ashur were a part of a fresh incursion of Semites, or whether they were descendants
1 The archaeological and other evidence on which Smith relies for his proof relates to the non-Semitic race which was in Assyria before Semites came, and not to the Semites themselves. At the start this race was much further advanced than the Semites in the mastery of the arts of life. Cf. Speiser’s Mesopotamian Origins, passim.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
79
of those who had been long in the land, the Assyrians of history were a mixed race. Although they spoke a Semitic language, there was in their blood a large element derived from the Central Asiatic race. This element gave to the Assyrians their prominent noses. The nose in the pure Semitic type, represented by the Arabs, is not particularly prominent or of that curved type which is commonly called “Roman;”1 in representatives of the Central Asiatic race, such as the Hittites, it is.2 In the early Sumerians the so-called Roman nose often appeared.3 It is not always present, however. Not all the family of Ur-Nina posessed it,4 and some groups lacked it entirely.5 Hammurabi, the Amorite, possessed a nose of quite a different type from the “Roman,”6 but in the majority of Assyrian faces represented in the sculptures, the Roman type of nose appears.7 This feature was, we believe, derived from the large non-Semitic element in their ancestry. From the same source came the non-Babylonian calendar, the custom of reckoning by Unwin, the different social institutions reflected in the Assyrian laws, and the fierce and ruthless traits in later Assyrian character The Akkadians of Babylonia did not possess this type of nose. It does not appear in the portraits of Manishtusu, Naram-Sin, or others who can be definitely identified as Akkadian.8 All these kinds of evidence tend irresistibly to establish the fact, which on a priori grounds we should have been led to expect, that the Assyr-
1	Cf. Alois Musil, The Northern Hegaz, New York, 1926, p. 93, and also his The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins, Frontispiece.
2	See Messerschmidt, Corpus Inscriptionum Eetticarum, II, Berlin, 1900, Tafeln, I, XXI and XXVI, and J. Garstang, The Empire of the Hittites, London, 1929, passim.
3	See Sir Arthur Keith in Hall and Woolley’s Al-Ubaid, pp. 214-240, for a discussion of skulls, and C. L. Woolley’s The Sumerians, Oxford, 1928, p. 31, and L. Legrain in The Museum Journal, Sept-Dec., 1929, 266-306, for pictures in profile of the earliest Sumerians.
4	Cf. the Ur-Nina Plaque E. de Sarzec, Découvertes en Chaldee, pi. 2bis and 2ter, also L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, pp. 110, 112, and 113.
5	Cf. E. Meyer, Sumerier und Semiten in Babylonien, Taf. VII and L. W. King, op. cit., p. 47 for a group from the time of Gudea which illustrates the point.
6	See his portrait on the Stele of the Code of Laws in J. de Morgan’s Délégation en Perse, IV, pi. 3, often reproduced elsewhere.
7	See Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum, London, 1914; H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, and Botta and Flandin, Monument de Ninive, Paris, 1849.
8	For Manishtusu, see Délégation en Perse, Vol. X, pi. 1, and for Naram-Sin, P.S.P. Handcock, Mesopotamian Archæology, New York, 1912, p. 194.80
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
ians are a mixed race, and that those features which differentiate them from the Akkadians and distinguish their institutions and customs from those of the Babylonians, are due to their inheritance from the earlier non-Semitic population of their land.
THE CANAAN ITES
It has already been noted that in the Old Testament the J document calls the pre-Hebrew population of Palestine Amorites, while the E document calls them Canaanites. It is also clear that there was a close relationship between these two peoples, for it appears from Deut. 3:9 that their languages differed from each other only dialectally. It was formerly supposed that the Canaanites were a later wave of Semitic population than the Amorites: that the latter had swept westward over this region about 2500 B.C., and the former about 1800-1700 B.C., having been pushed westward by the coming into Babylonia of the Kassites. The coming of the Canaanites was thus supposed to be a part of that westward movement which brought these later representatives of the Asiatic-Elamite race (the Kassites) into Babylonia and the Hyksos into Egypt.1 Attractive as this theory is, it rests on inference rather than upon evidence.
Another possibility is that the name Amorite was applied in the Old Testament to the inhabitants of the hill-country, and the term Canaanite to the dwellers on the coastal plain, both being of the same race.2 Some probability is lent to this theory by the fact that the root 1^3 in Hebrew means “be low.” Canaanite, therefore, seems to mean simply “Lowlanders.” The earliest occurrence of the term is in the El-Amarna letters, where it takes the form Kinnahi, a form philologically equivalent to	Their earliest men-
tion in history is the statement in a letter of Burnaburiash II to Amenophis IV that they appealed to his predecessor Kurigalzu II of Babylon for help against Egypt.3 How much earlier than this
1	So L. B. Paton, Early History of Palestine and Syria, New York, 1901, ch. V.
2	So R. C. Thompson in Cambridge Ancient History, II, 232, and 376 n.
3	Cf. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln, no. 8. The Ahiram inscription from the time of the XIIth Egyptian dynasty found at Gebal (see Syria, V, 135), shows that Semites were in Phoenicia earlier than the time of Burnaburiash I (1425 B.C.?), but we have no evidence that they were then called Canaanites.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
81
the name was applied to them, we have no means of knowing. While it is probable that the coming of the Kassites into Babylonia forced waves of population westward across Asia and into Africa, there is no evidence that the wave of Semites who came at this time was different in character or in language from the Amorites who had come at an earlier time. It seems probable that the Canaan-ites were, therefore, simply Amorites who had settled in the lowlands. Probably originally they extended along the whole Mediterranean coast. If so, the coming of the Philistines about 1200 B.C. drove them from the southern part of this coastland. They maintained themselves, however, in the narrow strip between the Lebanon and the sea where they became a series of city states, Tyre, Sidon, Gebal, Arvad, etc. The names of these cities are Semitic; they were founded by Semites. Here they developed into the race of sailors and traders whom the Greeks called Phoenicians, but the name X^a on a late Phoenician coin1 shows that they continued to designate themselves as Canaanites. A number of Phoenician inscriptions have survived which prove that the language of these Phoenicians differed little from Biblical Hebrew.2 This fact indicates that, like Hebrew, Phoenician was descended from the language of the Amorites and the Canaanites or Lowlanders.
THE AipiMJEANS
The Aramaeans developed some centuries later than the first appearance of the Amorites. The first historical reference to them is in the inscriptions of Adad-nirari I of Assyria,3 about 1310 B.C. This monarch called them Ahlami. He found them in upper Mesopotamia, where they were associated with the Suti and Iauri. In the time of Shalmeneser I they were in alliance with the Hittites.4 They appear to have been nomads at the time, and are said to have congregated in hordes. Tiglath-pileser I identifies them with the Aramu or Aramaeans.5 6 They continued to dwell in this region,
1	Cf. Schroder, Die Phonizische Sprache, p. 6, n. 2.
2	See also Additional Note at the end of the book.
3	Cf. D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Chicago, 1926,
§73.
'Ibid., §116.
6 Prism Insc. col. v, 1. 47; cf. Luckenbill, op. cit., §239.82
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
where their language survived for more than two thousand years and became the Syriac of the Christian Church. In the time of Tiglath-pileser III they were also found far down the Tigris and Euphrates in the alluvium of lower Babylonia. This king speaks of the “Aramaeans on the banks of the Tigris, Euphrates, and Surapi, as far as Uknu, on the shore of the lower sea,”1 i.e., the Persian Gulf. In due time their tongue displaced Akkadian in Babylonia, so that, in the Persian period, while legal contracts were still made in the Semitic tongue of ancient Babylonia, Aramaic was the language of common speech.2 The Babylonian Talmud, written in a dialect of this Aramaic is a witness to the fact that this condition continued for centuries. There is reason to believe that the Kaldu (Chaldeans), who first appear about 1000 B.C., and who four centuries later furnished the Neo-Babylonian dynasty to Babylonia, and who came from the “Sea Lands,” —a section of Arabia, as Dougherty has shown3—were also Aramaeans. Thus this people, who first appear in history in Upper Mesopotamia, either spread southward from that region or poured out of the “Sea Lands” of Arabia and became the dominating element in later Babylonian history.
From Haran in Upper Mesopotamia and the region about it they spread westward to Palestine and became one of the elements, as we shall see, in the formation of the Hebrew people. By later waves of migration they peopled Damascus and established various petty kingdoms in North Syria as at Samal (Zendjirli) and Yadi;4 still later they produced, by fusion with Arabs, the Nabathaeans, whose kingdom with its center at Petra flourished from the fifth century B.C. to the year 105 A.D.5 Early in the Christian era they also developed a civilization at Palmyra.6 This people thus widely scattered apparently became traders, and their language became
1	Cf. P. Rost, Die Keilschrifttexte Tiglath-pilesers III, 22, and pi. XXXV, 5-10; also Luckenbill, op. cit., §782.
2	Cf. Clay, “Aramaic Endorsements to Babylonian Contracts” in Old Testament and Semitic Studies in Memory of William Rainey Harper, Chicago, 1908,1, 285-322.
3	Cf. JAOS, Vol. L, pp. 1-25.
4	Cf. F. von Luschan, C. Humann, R. Koldeway, Sachau, and Schrader, Ausgra-bungen in Sendschirliy Berlin, 1893, 1898, 1902, 1911. Cf. also Sina Schiffer, Die Ara-maer, Leipzig, 1911.
5	Cf. the article “Nabathaeans” in the Encyclopsedia Biblica.
6	Cf. W. Wright, An Account of Palmyra and Zenobia} New York, 1895 and the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarumf Tom. II.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
83
in the later pre-Christian centuries the lingua franca of western Asia. Among the Jews it displaced the older Hebrew, and thus was spoken by those who in blood were but remotely akin to the original Aramaeans.
In considering the origin of the Aramaeans, it should be noted that they first appear in history in the region in which, in the century before their appearance, the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni existed.1 Fifteen hundred years later Aramaic was the language of this region, and even five hundred years later the Hurri had entirely disappeared.2 It is thus evident that the Hurri of this region were absorbed by the Semitic Aramaeans and became one of the elements which differentiated them racially and linguistically from the other Semitic peoples. Additional evidence for this fusion will be presented, when we consider the composition of the Hebrew people. It was certainly from the old homeland of the Mitanni that the Aramaeans of North Syria and Damascus migrated. Whether those of Babylonia moved down the river from the same region, or came directly from Arabia, as the Kaldu (Chaldaeans) appear to have done, we have no means of knowing. A large section of the Aramaeans, however, were clearly formed in a melting pot, which fused large strains of Hurri blood with their Semitic inheritance.
THE HEBREWS
The superficial reader of the Old Testament gains the impression that the Hebrews were of pure Semitic stock and were all descended from Abraham. Abraham is called the “Hebrew” cbri, (Gen. 14:13), which has been supposed to mean “The Beyonder,” because he came from beyond the Euphrates, though, as we shall see, the word had quite a different origin. In reality a closer study of the Old Testament reveals the fact that many elements entered into the making of the Hebrew people, and the testimony of the Old Testament is confirmed by archaeology and ethnology.
It has already been pointed out that those who invade and conquer a land subdue and absorb the population which they find there. The result is, in the course of time, the production of a new stock
1	Cf. G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 97 f.
2	There is no reference to them in the inscriptions of Ashur-nasir-pal II, who fought with various people in this region.84
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
by the fusion of the two. The writer has pointed out elsewhere1 that the stories of the marriages of the patriarchs are stories of alliances by which tribes resident in Palestine before the Hebrews came were fused with the conquerors. It is now known that Palestine was inhabited far back in palaeolithic times. Several skulls have been found of the type of the “Neanderthal Man,” or even more primitive, having a brain capacity far less than that of any living men.2 Probably this race disappeared in the floods which followed the break-up of the last ice-age. It is quite different, however, with the neolithic men discovered by Macalister at Gezer. These were a small, well developed, non-Semitic people.3 They appear to have lived in the country until conquered and absorbed by the Semitic Amorites. Macalister thought them the people whom the Bible called “Horites,” because they lived in caves, a Semitic root for “dig” and “hole” being kharu (W7 or iOfl). More recently Speiser and Chiera4 have conjectured that the Biblical Horites were Hurri. Whether the one conjecture of the other be accepted, it is clear that the population in question was non-Semitic. This population was absorbed by the Amorites, and through them contributed something to the composition of the later Hebrew people.
The biblical traditions bear witness to the presence of a large Aramaean element in the ancestry of the Hebrews. Abraham is said to have sojourned in Haran, an Aramaean center, to Haran he sent to take a wife for Isaac from among his kinsfolk there, thither (i.e., to the Aramaean country of Padan-aram) Jacob went for his wives. All these traditions are really recollections of the fact that Aramaean tribes wandered into Palestine and furnished to that country a dominating element. The El-Amarna tablets, as will be pointed
1	The Religion of Israel, 1918, 2nd ed., 1928, Ch. II, and A History of the Hebrew People, 1930, Ch. II.
2	See Bulletin No. 7 of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1925; cf. also Archxology and the Bible, 5th ed., p. 553 f. More recently Miss Gertrude Caton-Thomp-son has discovered a second one nearer Jerusalem. Several have also been discovered at Athlit near Mount Carmel; see the writer’s Archxology and the Bible, 6th ed., 1933, p. 137-139.
3	Cf. R.A. S. Macalister, The Excavation of Gezer, London, 1912,1, 145 ff., and also his Bible Side-Lights from the Mound of Gezer, London, 1906, Ch. II.
4	Cf. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, VI, 80 f.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
85
out below, now furnish us with contemporary evidence of the coming of this Aramaic factor in Palestinian history. The Aramaeans were, however, so far in the minority after the Hebrew settlement in Canaan, that the Aramaean Hebrews adopted in time the language of the Amorites, which they spoke and wrote for so long a time that we now call it Hebrew. It thus came about that, though the Hebrews counted their eponymous ancestor an Aramaean,1 they themselves spoke for centuries a non-Aramaic language.
In addition to the Aramaean, Amorite, and pre-Semitic Palestinian elements which entered into the composition of the Hebrew people, there was also a large mixture of the blood of that Central Asiatic race which we have found in early Elam and Babylonia and from which the Hittites and Hurri sprung. Somatically this element so far dominated the others that it gave to the Jew the prominent nose of the Hittite type, in modern times often called “Roman”—a feature practically unknown among the purely Semitic Arabs.2 This strain of the Hebrew inheritance may have entered in one or all of the three following ways:
1. It is possible that before the coming of the Amorites, clans of of this race had pushed their way down into Palestine, where they were afterward absorbed by the Amorites.3 In this case, when the Amorites were absorbed by the Hebrews, the Amorite type had already been changed from the pure Semitic type. 2. Amorites reached southern Palestine directly from South Arabia across the Arabian deserts. The discovery of South Arabic inscriptions in the vicinity of El-Ula,4 together with the fact that the name Emiuenshi (Ammi-anshi), the earliest Palestinian Amorite name that we have, corresponds to the South Arabic type,5 lends probability to the supposition that many Amorites found their way into Palestine by this route. It is also more than probable that other Amorites in the course of the centuries, failing to gain a foothold in Babylonia or Assyria, surged westward to Palestine through the Hurri country of Upper Mesopotamia, where, like the Assyrians,
1	Deut. 26:5.
2	The evidence is similar to that already presented in the case of the Assyrians: cf. above, p. 76, n 4 and p. n, n 1.
3	So Chiera and Speiser, as already noted; see above, p. 76.
4	See Abel and Savignac, Mission archéologique en Arabie, II, 236-362.
5	Cf. Ammi-ansha, O. Weber, Südarabische Studien.86
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
they formed alliances with Hurri and brought them along into Palestine with them. 3. Lastly, the clans which formed the Israelitish nation, and which boasted their Aramaean kinship, were almost certainly composed in part of Hurri elements, which were designated “Hittite” both by the Assyrians and in the Old Testament. Among the El-Amarna letters there are seven written by Abdi-Hepa of Jerusalem, in which he graphically describes how the land is being overrun by the Habiri.1 The name “Habiri” is philologically equivalent to “Hebrews.” At the same time Rib-Adda, king of Gebal, was complaining to the king of Egypt that the SA-GAZme§ were overrunning the lands in the neighborhood of Phoenicia.2 It has now been proved that SA-GAZme§ is the Sumerian equivalent of Habiri. SA-GAZme§ means “hunter,” “robber,” “plunderer,” and “Habiri,”3 which was formerly thought to mean “allies,” may, and in the judgment of some scholars does, also mean “plunderer,” “robber.” Whichever of these meanings may be indicated by it, there can be little doubt that it is the real original of the name “Hebrews.”
The Hittite sources from Boghaz Koi also mention the Habiri, sometimes spelling out their name phonetically and sometimes designating them by their Sumerian ideograph.4 It appears from these references, combined with references to them in the El-Amarna tablets, that they were sometimes employed by Hittite, Mitannian, and other kings as mercenaries. They appear to have been artificial brotherhoods or clans, formed partly of Aramaeans and partly of Hurrians (and possibly other members of the Central Asiatic race) united for the purpose of hunting and plunder, who were later sometimes employed as mercenary soldiers. It was the coming of some of these Habiri to Palestine, and the gaining by them of a foothold there, that is recorded in the El-Amarna tablets. It was the coming of this same people that is celebrated in the story of the marriages of Jacob and the birth of his children by the daughters of Laban, the Aramaean, though in these stories the main facts are intertwined
1	Cf. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln, Nos. 286-298, and G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 41 ff.
2	Cf. Knudtzon, op. cit., No. 84 ff.
3	Speiser suggests Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research. XIII, (1933), 41 that “Habiri” means “being a Nomad.”
4	Cf. Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoi I, No. 1, rev. 49 and No. 3, rev. 5 with No. 4 iv, 29; also with Vol. IV, No. 10, rev. 3, and Vol. V, No. 3, i, 36.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
87
with a large romantic element. Through the Habiri, then, a large non-Semitic element derived from the Central Asiatic race entered into the composition of the Hebrew people. The result was that in the Hebrew and the Jew we have a people who, although they speak a Semitic language, are largely non-Semitic in extraction.
Not all the Habiri migrated from Upper Mesopotamia to Palestine. Hittite sources make it clear that at the very time the Habiri of the El-Amarna tablets were conquering Palestine, others were still resident in the land of the Mitannian Hurri.1 These were doubtless absorbed there and became one of the strands woven into the fabric of the ancestry of the later Syrians.
According to the traditions of Genesis the oldest sons of Jacob were the sons of Leah, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun.2 This means that these tribes were the original Habiri who invaded Palestine. They appear to have called themselves the Bne Israel. The El-Amarna tablets give us contemporary evidence of their coming. By the time of the Egyptian king Merneptah, about 1220 B.C., they were well established in the land.3 They pushed in among the peoples already there, made alliances with them, and gradually absorbed them. This is particularly true of the tribe of Judah. The alliances by which this is brought about are represented in the Bible as marriages of Judah’s sons.4 Apparently these tribes never went to Egypt.
The same Biblical traditions represent the sons of Jacob born from Rachel as younger than those born from Leah.5 The historical meaning of this appears to be that these tribes were a later wave of Aramaean or Habiri migration, and that, failing to gain a foothold in Palestine, they roamed the desert, from which by a famine they were driven into the Egyptian Delta. In time they were reduced to the position of semi-serfdom, and were afterward delivered by Moses,6 who negotiated an alliance for them with the Midianite
1 See references in the preceding note.
2Cf. Gen. 29:31-35 and 30:18-20.
3	Cf. Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt, III, 264 ff.; cf. also G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 375.
4	Gen. ch. 38.
5	Cf. Gen. 30:22-24 and 35:16-19.
6	Cf. Exodus chs. 1-12. The theory of two settlements of Israel in Canaan is more fully worked out by Paton in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. XXXII, pp. 1-53;88
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Kenites,* 1 by which Yahweh became their God. About 1200 B.C., or a little later, they pushed their way into central Palestine, which the Leah tribes had failed to conquer, made alliances with those tribes as their recognized kinsmen, who in time accepted the worship of Yahweh and came to regard the traditions of the Exodus as their own.2
The biblical traditions, further, represent the tribes of Gad and Asher, Dan and Napthali as descended from slave girls of Jacob’s household.3 This means that these tribes came into the Hebrew commonwealth later than the other tribes and were never regarded as on quite an equal footing with the others. One of these tribes, Asher, appears in the El-Amarna letters as an Amorite kingdom,4 the members of which are once referred to as “The sons of Ebed Ashera.”5 Ebed Ashera was their king. As these people lived in part where the tribe of Asher lived in later Hebrew history, there can be little doubt that they were the ancestors of the Hebrew tribe of Asher, and that the Aramaean Hebrews found them in this part of the country and made an alliance with them. Analogy makes it probable that the tribes of Gad, Dan, and Napthali had a similar origin, if only we had the necessary sources to enable us to trace it. The nation Israel was in the period of the Judges in process of formation. By pressure from outside the tribes were being welded together. Not until the reign of king Saul was there a national consciousness, and the Hebrew nation of history fully formed. Not even then was the process complete. Many of the older Amorite
also in the Biblical World, Vol. XLVI, pp. 82-88; cf. also the present writer’s Religion of Israel, ch. Ill, and his History of the Hebrew People, Chs. IV-VII. Olmstead’s identification of the names of Joshua and Benjamin in an El-Amarna letter, in his History of Palestine and Syria, p. 188, and Gars tang’s strong arguments in favor of supposing that Jericho was destroyed not far from 1400 B.C., in his The Foundations of Bible History—Joshua and Judges, p. 146 f., no more invalidate the theory proposed here than the adoption of the Exodus stories by the J writer invalidate it. By the time the traditions were written down these ancient stories, however they originated, must have become the property of both Judah and of the Rachel tribes.
1	Exodus 18:1-12; cf. Judges 1:16.
2	Thus the J Document, written in Judah, recounts them as national experiences.
3	Cf. Gen. 30:1-13.
4	Cf. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafdn, No. 84 ff. The Hittite Tablets from Bo-ghaz Koi bear witness to the existence and importance of the same kingdom; cf. J. Friedrich, Staatsvertrdge des Hatti-Reiches in hethitische Sprache, Leipzig, 1926, pp. 1-48.
5	Knudtzon, op. cit., No. 103; cf. Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 440.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
89
elements in the land were not absorbed until the reign of Solomon when they were made ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water.”1 Thus reduced to servitude they were finally absorbed and the process of fusing, in the melting pot of Palestine, the many racial elements, from which the Hebrews of history were composed, was at last complete. To this composite origin of the Hebrew people the prophet Ezekiel refers, when he says: “The Amorite was thy father, and thy mother a Hittite.”2
THE EGYPTIANS
The length of recorded history of civilization in the valley of the Nile has long fascinated students, but recent research has revealed vistas of still earlier human habitation in that valley far longer than those that are recorded in all written history. The masterly work of Petrie which exhibited the unfolding of Egyptian prehistory through fifty sequence dates,3 the discovery of a civilization at Badari anterior to and different from that of any previously known pre-dynastic civilization by Mr. Guy Brunton and Miss Gertrude Caton-Thompson,4 and the investigation of the remains of palaeolithic man in Upper Egypt and in the Fayum by K. S. Sanford and W. J. Arkell5 have made it possible to understand as never before the immense antiquity to which the human habitation of Egypt extends. Palaeolithic man appeared first in Egypt at the beginning of pleistocene times, at least 100,000 years ago. The implements which he employed have been found both in Upper Egypt6 and in the Fayum.7 At the time the northeastern part of Africa was still a well watered land. Abundant waters were pouring through the Nile, and it was creating gravel terraces or beaches 100 feet above its
1	Cf. Josh. 9:21, 23, 27, and 1 Kgs. 5:15.
2	Eze. 16:3.
3	Prehistoric Egypt, by W. M. Flinders Petrie, London, 1920. Cf. also Alexander Scharff, Grundziige der aegyptischen Vorgeschichte, Leipzig, 1927.
4	The Badarian Civilisation by Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson, London, 1928.
5	First Report of Prehistoric Survey of Egypt, by K. S. Sanford and W. J. Arkell, Chicago, 1928, and Palaeolithic Man and the Nile-Fayum Divide by the same authors, Chicago, 1929.
6	Sanford and Arkell, Prehistoric Survey Expedition, p. 11 f., and Palaeolithic Man, p. 36.
7	Sanford and Arkell, Palaeolithic Man, pp. 28-70.90
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present level. The period of desiccation which made Egypt what it is today came long afterward. The implements of this palaeolithic man correspond both in form and in the sequence of forms to those which the palaeolithic men of Europe, who lived in the glacial and interglacial periods, were making.1 What the racial connection of these men with their European contemporaries, if any, may have been, we do not know. It is certain that, though the blood of their descendants may have been mingled with other strains in the veins of the Egyptians of the historic period, they did not furnish the dominant strain to the Egyptians of history. Through at least five scores of thousands of years palaeolithic man continued his prolonged existence in the Nile Valley. After half of that time had passed, desiccation set in and the present arid conditions began to be approached.2 The great tributaries of the Nile dried up, and man was compelled to confine his activities close to the river valley. No evidence that he was able to wander far afield, as in earlier times, has been found. In general, then, we infer that conditions at least similar to those which exist in Egypt today have prevailed there for a period of something like 25,000 years.
The different steps in the transition in Egypt from the palaeolithic civilization to the neolithic are shrouded in obscurity. Possibly some future discovery will reveal them. The earliest neolithic civilization known (that at Badari) came, when discovered, as a complete surprise. Badari lies on the east side of the Nile near Qau a little above Assuit in the middle portion of Upper Egypt. When the civilization revealed by the deposits at Badari originated, the present arable land of the Nile Valley was still largely swamps. The human settlements were made on the spurs of the now desert mountains. There was not much habitable land on the lower levels. The climate was colder then than it is now; skins were worn for garments and the fur was usually worn inside for warmth. Perhaps the influence of the ice-age of Europe may be discerned in these facts. The Badarians made a ripple-surfaced pottery essentially different from that of any other people yet discovered in Egypt. In addition to hunting and fishing they lived as agriculturists. They raised grain and apparently kept cattle, pasturing them, apparently,
1	Ibid., pp. 28-32.
2	Ibid., p. 52 ff.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
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on what is now desert. They made pottery of delicate thinness, and tanned and employed leather. They traded with the coast-land of the Red Sea, whence came shells; they obtained turquoise, perhaps from Sinai; porphyry either from the cataract or from the Red Sea mountains. Some of the pots found suggest a trade-connection with Syria1. The Badarians were, therefore, not an isolated people. They were not nomads. They lived on the spurs of the cliffs of Egypt during the latter part of the period covered by Petrie’s sequence dates 1-30, which he assumed were occupied by the silting up of the Nile-channel until it was sufficiently firm for human habitation.
Petrie, in his Prehistoric Egypt,2 divided the time between the beginning of the silting up of the bed of the Nile and the beginning of the first dynasty into eighty sequence dates. As just noted, he assumed that thirty of these had passed before the beginning of that pre-dynastic history which, in 1920, he could trace in archaeological materials. He distributed the materials from pre-dynastic times then known to him, in accordance with its development, among the fifty sequence dates between 30 and 80. During the millennia covered by these sequence dates Petrie thought that he could distinguish three types of civilization, each of which marked an incursion of immigrants into the Nile Valley.3 The Egyptians of S.D. 30 buried their dead in shallow holes, “with a single black-topped cup, a goat-skin over the body, and rarely a rhombic slate palette. Yet even then they fastened the skin with a copper pin.” Immediately after these people, whom Petrie then regarded as the first settlers in Egypt, there came a more highly civilized people, who made pottery so exactly like that still made in the highlands of Algiers that Petrie felt justified in calling this an immigration of “Libyans.”4 The linguistic evidence adduced in a previous chapter makes it probable that these immigrants were Hamites, and that, with their coming, we can trace the entrance into Egypt of that strain of blood which links the Egyptians to the
1	Cf. Brunton and Miss Caton-Thompson, The Badarian Civilisation, ch. XII.
2	London, 1920.
3	Op. cit., 47 f.
4	In addition to the reference cited in the preceding note, cf. Libyan Notes, by David Randall-Maclver and Anthony Wilkin, London, 1901, ch. X.92
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other Hamitic peoples. It would be, of course, a mistake to suppose that the whole body of Hamites, who impressed the Hamitic mark of Egyptian speech, came at one time with this immigration. Doubtless this was but the beginning of many successive invasions of the fertile Nile Valley by Hamitic tribes who were allured thither by the progressive desiccation of the Sahara region. Such invasions occurred again and again far down into the historic period,1 and doubtless many others took place in prehistoric time. The significance of Petrie’s evidence is that it enables us to discern the entrance of Hamites into Egypt at what was, when his book was written, believed to be the very beginning of neolithic habitation of that land. These people were fond of making pottery, but their pots imitated baskets. It is thus clear that the making of pots was, for them, a comparatively new art. Petrie describes the civilization of these people with some fullness. Theirs was, almost altogether, a stone-age civilization.
At the beginning of S.D. 38, a people came into Egypt, apparently from the east, whose pots imitated stoneware. They had retreating foreheads, long, pointed noses, and small projecting beards. They wore more clothing than the Egyptians whom they displaced, and had come from higher, colder regions. Petrie thought they came from the western coast of the Red Sea, from the Sinai peninsula, or from the Hejaz in Arabia. The maximum of this immigration was at S.D 38, but it continued until S.D. 41-43. The utensils of this civilization gradually displaced and drove out those of the preceding civilization. It is possible that these immigrants were Semitic.
Petrie found traces of a third civilization, beginning at S.D. 46-50, becoming more pronounced at S.D. 57 and reaching its culmination at S.D. 63. This civilization introduced a pottery much like that found at Susa, seal cylinders of Babylonian type, and so many objects like things found in Elam, that Petrie is quite positive of Elamite influence. We should call it the influence of the race we have designated Asiatic-Elamite, who appear to have come from central Asia. It seems to the present writer that the mediators of this civilization were probably Semites from Arabia or Babylonia. If, however, representatives of this Asiatic-Elamite race settled in
1 Cf. J. H. Breasted, History of Egypt, pp. 49,179,254, 411 f., 468 f., 478 f., and 547 f.COMPOSITION OF HISTORIC PEOPLES
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Egypt, the analogy of later invasions from the east would lead us to believe that they were accompanied by large numbers of Semites, so that, in any event, Semites were finding their way into Egypt. Scholars agree that Egyptian is a Semitized language; so far as we know, it was not influenced by mixture with Elamite speech. These facts tend to confirm the supposition that these immigrants from the East were largely of the Semitic stock.
Petrie recognized also that a Nubian element was injected into the Egyptian mixture about the time that the Babylonian or Elamite wave of migration reached it. This Nubian invasion, he held, broke the second civilization at S.D. 63.
These conclusions of Petrie are so well established that Scharff, although his nomenclature is different, is compelled to agree with them.1 Scharff recognizes the first and second of the cultures defined by Petrie substantially as Petrie did, but holds that the influences which Petrie had called Elamite, and which he himself designates by the Zauberwort “Babylonien” belonged to the late pre-dynastic and early historical period.2 Even if Scharff be right, the difference is not important. As we shall see presently, prehistory merged into history in the late pre-dynastic period.
In later time Egypt was divided into forty-two sp.t or divisions. The Greeks called these “nomes.” Evidently they represented old tribal divisions. In one nome the jackal was sacred to the deity, in another the cat, in another the lion, in another the hawk, and so on—all of which points to the perpetuation of early totemistic tribal ideas. It is quite possible that these tribes did not all settle in the Nile Valley in prehistoric time. In chapter VI a study of the composition of the population of these nomes will be found. Such a study shows that while migrations occurred, in some cases as late as the Middle Kingdom, the great majority of the nomes date from prehistoric time, and perpetuate the fact that many tribes penetrated the Nile Valley. Some of these tribes were Hamitic; some were Semitic. One must recognize the possibility that Nubians, the creators of the Badarian civilization, and even palaeolithic elements entered into the composition of the Egyptian people, but if so they were so absorbed by the Hamites and Semites that these
1	Grundzüge der ägyptischen Vorgeschichte.
2	Op. citp. 41 ff.94
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became the dominant elements. Egypt, like modern America, was a melting pot, but linguistic evidence makes it clear that the dominant strains in the fusion of these elements were Hamitic and Semitic. The Egyptian language which emerged was a Hamitic language Semitized.1
Like men in other parts of the world, the totemistic tribes of this far-off time fought with each other. Gradually by conquest the country was united into three or four kingdoms, each of which had its totemic symbol. There were the hornet kings of Lower Egypt, the papyrus kings of Men-nopher (Memphis) and Ehnas (Heracle-opolis), the hawk kings of Hieraconpolis, and the hawk kings of This. Preceding these, or possibly contemporary with some of them, there had been various local kingdoms in different parts of the Delta.2 Probably the hawk kings were not contemporaneous but successive, those of This representing a conquest by men of that nome of an older dynasty of the more southern nome. In time these dynasties were merged into two, one ruling Upper Egypt, and the other Lower Egypt. This dual kingdom lasted so long that to the latest times the Egyptians called their land the two kingdoms, and the Hebrew name for Egypt, misraim, means ‘The two Egypts.’ Finally Mena united the two kingdoms and the dynastic history of Egypt began.
1	Cf. articles on Semitic-Egyptian affinities by Erman in Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache, v. 14, p. 8, and in ZDMG v. 46 (1892), p. 93; on vocabulary affinities by Ember and Albright in the same Zeitschrift, v. 49 (1911), pp. 87, 93; v. 50, p. 86; v. 51, pp. 110, 138; v. 53, p. 84.
2	Cf. K. Sethe, Urgeschichte und älteste Religion der Ägypter, Leipzig, 1930, §§163-204.IV
EARLY SEMITIC AND HAMITIC SOCIAL LIFE
THE late W. Robertson Smith1 in beginning his discussion of the relations of gods and men in the oldest Semitic communities, took the clan as the earliest social unit. This view at the time seemed to be justified by the sociological theories of McLennan, and was followed by the present writer in Semitic Origins.2 It is, however, a theory which is not sustained at present by sociological authorities. For example, the researches of Robert H. Lowie, as embodied in his Primitive Society (N.Y. 1920),3 make it probable that the earliest social unit is the family, and that larger social groups, such as clans or “sibs,” as Lowie prefers to call them, are a later and natural development. The family, as Lowie clearly demonstrates, might be matrilineal or patrilineal, that is, descent might be reckoned through the mother or through the father. In ¡either case, a sense of closer kinship between those who were the mother’s brothers, uncles, nephews, and nieces or those of the father (according as the kinship was matrilineal or patrilineal) would exist than with any others. In the struggle for existence amidst the hostile relations that frequently prevailed in primitive life, those who possessed this sense of kinship would naturally unite for defense and for any enterprise which involved united effort. In this way, clans or sibs would naturally be formed. In 1901, when Semitic Origins was written, the writer adopted the clan theory developed by his colleague Prof. L. M. Keasby. According to Keasby’s classification, there were “communal” clans, which lived in protected spots where the beginnings of agriculture or arboriculture were possible. These clans were supposed to have been formed by women and the weaker men, the strong men having been drawn away by some hazardous enter-
1	Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed. Lond., 1894, p. 35.
2	Ch. 2.
3	Ghs. 4-8.
9596
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prise. Such clans were believed to be matrilineal. The “republican” clans were thought to have been composed of young and enterprising men, fearless and capable of enduring hardship, whose leader was distinguished because of his skill and daring. Such groups of men were believed to take with them a few hardy women. In such clans it was thought that polyandry of the Thibetan type prevailed, and descent was reckoned through the mother. According to this theory both the communal clan and the republican clan gave way to the patriarchal clan where it was possible in the lapse of time fully to develop pastoral life, and where the clan became patrilineal. In the patriarchal clan polygamy often prevailed.
According to the present opinion of the best sociologists it does not seem possible to justify such a classification. Society is thoroughly flexible. Progress is not made in different countries by movements that are uniform. The tendency, therefore, now is to start with the family as a unit, to ascertain the type of marriage which prevails, the consequent method of reckoning descent, to classify in the light of such facts the social phenomena, and to refrain from postulating a too-definite knowledge of origins which under the circumstances would be purely hypothetical.
In his Semitic Origins the writer again, following in the footsteps of W. Robertson Smith, assumed that all primitive peoples had passed through a totemistic stage. At that time many students under the influence of the work of Sir James G. Frazer found in totemism the key to many of the mysteries of the early life of man. Principal F. B. Jevons in his Introduction to the History of Religion (London, 1896), a book which passed through many later editions, went so far as to trace to totemism sacrifice, tree and plant worship, agriculture and consequently civilization. It now seems, however, that the theory that all peoples have at one time passed through a totemistic stage is incapable of proof. Where totemism exists at the present day, as in Australia1 and among certain types of American Indians2 (Amerinds) it is by no means a uniform system. Aus-
1	See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, London, 1899, ch. IV, and A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of Southeast Australia, London, 1904, ch. III.
2	For Amerind totemism see J. G. Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, III, 40 and 46 if., Mary A. Owen, Folk-lore of the Musquakie Indians, London, 1904, p. 8 if., W. J. Hoffman, Fourteenth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1896, Pt. I, etc.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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tralian totemism differs radically from the totemism of the Amerinds. It seems certain that the ancient Egyptians were totemistic.1 The totemism which can be traced in Egypt, however, was, in many respects, of a still different type from either that found in Australia or in North America. The phenomena adduced by W. Robertson Smith2 to prove the existence of totemism among the Semitic peoples were the occurrence of animal names and his belief that groups thought themselves related by kinship to animals and plants. The studies of the present writer have led him to think that this interpretation is not justified. It will be shown below in Chapter VI that those Egyptian nomes which can plausibly be regarded as having been settled by Semites had no sacred animal, while all other Egyptian nomes had one. Had the Semites ever regarded an animal as a totem in the sense in which the Hamites did, this could not have been the case. Semites regarded serpents as sacred; doves and other animals were supposed to belong particularly to the universal Semitic mother goddess. At present it is not possible to discern the exact association of ideas which brought this about or the exact nature of the relation of the animal to the deity, but it seems clear that there is no adequate ground for supposing that it is a survival from totemism. The association must be explained in some other way.3
If now in accordance with the sociological theories of the present time we take the family as the primitive social unit, we are at once confronted with the important question of the classification of the
1	Some detailed evidence of this is given in Chapter VI.
2	See Journal of Philology, v. 9, pp. 79 to 100; Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia. (Camb., 1885), pp. 192-201; and for a summary see G. A. Barton, Semitic Origins (N. Y., 1902), p. 35 f.
3	The point will be further discussed below; see pp. 122 f. and 138. It may, however, be observed here that light on this point may be gained by studying somewhat analogous phenomena among the Melanesians. R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 26 ff. and 32 if. shows how in parts of those islands associations with plants and animals have grown up in recent times which seem at first sight to be phenomena which belong to totemism. In one island, for example, there is a ban on eating bananas. It happens that the origin of this ban is so recent that it can be remembered. An old and honored member of the group forbade them to eat bananas after his death, as, he said, he was going into the banana trees. It is quite possible that both taboos of certain things and ideas of their association with some god or some person may have grown up for causes in no way connected with totemism, but which, in the absence of evidence, we cannot now trace.98
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
family. Clearly that classification depends upon the nature of the marriage tie. McLennan and some of his contemporaries contended that in primitive society monogamous marriage was practically unknown and that promiscuity characterized the relation of the sexes. They held that through polyandry of the Nair type and the Thibetan type the organization of the family had progressed toward polygany and monogamy. This view was contested by Edward Westermarck in his great work The History of Human Marriage (New York, 1891). Westermarck contended that many birds and some of the higher mammals mated permanently, or almost permanently, with one mate, and that it was altogether gratuitous to suppose that the earliest human marriages were of a different character. During the years that have passed since the first appearance of Wester-marck’s work the progress of knowledge appears to have vindicated the correctness of his position. He recognized, however, that marriage customs were by no means uniform throughout the world, that in some countries there had been marked variations from the primitive type, and that in practically all countries there had been much sexual irregularity outside the marriage tie. In later editions of his work, Westermarck treated fully the various types of polyandry which have existed in different countries and recognized the existence of the types of marriage at various places, in different parts of the world, on which McLennan and W. Robertson Smith had based their theories. The main point of his contention, however, was that this did not represent the earliest stages of the evolution of human marriage, but rather degenerations from the primitive type which have been brought about by various causes.
Semitic Origins was written under the influence of the theories of McLennan and W. Robertson Smith. The facts then cited as evidence of the existence in early Semitic society of polyandry of the Nair and Thibetan types should be reevaluated to ascertain what, in the light of our present knowledge, they actually reveal as to the character of early Semitic social organization. In order to do this it will be best, first, to recount the facts with reference to their primitive social institutions. As pointed out in Chapter I, Arabia was the cradle-land of Semitic society. Here, however, we meet with great difficulties. The literary and historical remains for the time prior to Mohammed are very scanty. True, we have from SouthEARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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Arabia some hundreds of inscriptions, but they are for the most part brief and refer to building operations or to agricultural conditions. Some of them give information concerning religious sacrifices. They afford us information concerning the organization of the social life of South Arabia only by inference. For North Arabia we are confined to the Mu’allakat poems, various allusions and quotations in the Kitab al-Aghani, to references to pre-Mohammedan conditions in the Coran, to early Islamic traditions, and a few ällusions in Greek and Roman writers. The case is, however, not so hopeless as it at first appears. Conditions of life in the deserts of Arabia have changed little in the last four or five thousand years, and these conditions are such that many ancient institutions have persisted long after they had disappeared from other parts of the Semitic world. We are able, therefore, to discern through these sources a number of deviations from normal monogamous marriage in family life of early Arabia and therefore of the primitive Semites. These deviations fall naturally into three types.
First, there is polyandry, a form of marriage which permits a woman to have more than one husband. Our evidence for this is an oft-quoted passage from the Geography of Strabo. It reads as follows:1
All the kindred have property in common, the eldest being the lord; all have one wife, and it is first come first served, the man who enters to her leaving at the door the stick which it is customary for everyone to carry; but the night she spends with the eldest. Hence, all are brothers of all; they also have conjugal intercourse with mothers;2 an adulterer is punished with death; an adulterer is a man of another stock.
The type of polyandry discussed in this passage has often been called Thibetan because it was first studied in Thibet. Edward Glaser3 and Hugo Winckler4 found epigraphic confirmation of the statement of Strabo among the Sabaeans and Minaeans.
1	Strabo, Bk. XVI, ch. 4, p. 783.
2	This is probably not to be taken literally, but to be explained by Coran 426, where it appeared that men had married wives of their fathers. Cf. Robertson Smith in Journal of Philology, Vol. IX, p. 86, n. 2.
3	See his note “Polyandrie oder Gesellschaftschen bei den alten Sabäern” in the Beilagen of Allgemeine Zeitung, München, December 8, 1897.
4	“Die Polyandrie bei den Minäern,” in Winckler’s Altorientalische Forschungen} 2te Reihe, Vol. I, pp. 81-83.100
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The late Robertson Smith collected considerable evidence to show that this type of polyandry was also known in North Arabia and in other parts of the Semitic territory. His arguments are: (1) Bokhari relates that two men made a covenant of brotherhood, which resulted in their sharing their goods and wives—a fact which would seem to show a survival of a custom of fraternal polyandry.1 (2) In Arabia kanna means the wife of a son or brother, but is used also to denote one’s own wife. In Hebrew kdlldh means both betrothed and daughter-in-law; while in Syriac kalthd means both bride and daughter-in-law. These facts can be explained most easily as remnants of fraternal polyandry.2 (3) The Arabic law that a man has the first right to the hand of his cousin, as well as the fact which the 4th Sura of the Coran and its attendant traditions attest, that in case a man died and left only female children, the father’s male relatives inherited his property and married his daughters, are regarded as the results of a previously existing polyandrous condition of society like that described by Strabo.3 (4) The Coran (423) forbids men to inherit women against their will, and forbids (426) them to take their stepmothers in marriage “except what has passed.” This is regarded as evidence that down to the time of Mohammed these attendant circumstances of polyandry had continued, and that the prophet did not dare to annul existing unions,' through he forbade such marriages in the future.4 Until about 2800 B.C. polyandry was sometimes practised in the city of Lagash in southern Babylonia. In the reforms instituted by Urukagina, king of that city, provision is made for the cessation of such unions.5 This action is evidence both of the existence of polyandry until that time and that it was a practice contrary to the prevailing moral sense. Had it not been, it would not have been forbidden. Lagash had been settled, however, by three different races,6 and it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to tell whether polyandry was at Lagash a Semitic custom or a practice of one of the other races.
1	W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, Cambridge, 1885, p. 135.
2	Kinship, p. 136. I have modified the statements slightly in quoting because, in the form in which Smith made them, they are not lexically defensible.
3	Ibid., pp. 138, 139.
*Ibid., pp. 86, 87.
6 G. A. Barton, The Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, New Haven, 1929, p. 87.
6 See above, ch. Ill, p. 61 ff.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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W. Robertson Smith also, following in the footsteps of McLennan, urged that the Levirate custom of marrying the wife of a dead brother to raise up seed to him, of which we have such a beautiful idyl in Ruth 3, 4, of which he also found traces in Arabia,1 and which still exists in Abyssinia,2 was an outgrowth of fraternal polyandry. It seemed to him and McLennan that no one would have thought of counting the son of one brother as the son of another, if previously the sons had not been the property of all in common. Spencer, Starcke, and Westermarck have all contested this position. Spencer suggests that it is one of the results of inheriting women as one would inherit other property;3 to which Starcke justly replies that this view leaves unexplained the real point of the custom, the counting of the children as the offspring of the dead brother. Starcke4 and Westermarck5 point out that the Levirate, or institutions of a similar character, have existed in many parts of the world where there was no suspicion of polyandry, and that therefore another explanation must be sought. That which they offer is that in primitive communities the idea of fatherhood is juridical, and not based on actual fatherhood, and that this fact, combined with the desire to keep intact the dead man’s estate, produced the institution in question.
Second, another form of marriage which is not necessarily a deviation from the monogamous type of marriage is what is called beena marriage. In this type of marriage the husband goes to live in the wife’s village and the children are regarded as members of her tribe. An example of this among the Semites is found in the story of Jacob’s marriage to Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban, in Genesis chaps. 29-31. Jacob lived in the family of Laban; there his children were born; and when he decided to flee, Laban followed him and claimed that the children were his children. Other examples of this may be cited.
A third type of marriage is called mot'a marriage. Mot'a marriage is marriage of a temporary type. The word mot'a is employed by
1	Kinship, p. 87.
2	Letourneau’s Evolution of Marriage, p. 265.
3	Principles of Sociology, I, 661.
4	The Primitive Family, pp. 157,158, and the International Journal of Ethics, III, 465.
5	The History of Human Marriage, pp. 510-514.102
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some writers in a large sense to cover all relations between a man and woman in her own home which did not involve a loss of character on her part but prevented the woman’s tribe from recognizing the children. Mot'a marriage, therefore, differs from beena marriage simply because of its temporary character. In beena marriage the husband settled either for a considerable time or temporarily in the wife’s tribe. Mot'a marriages are of a much more temporary duration. Ammianus Marcellinus (XIV. 4) gives evidence of its existence in ancient times among the Arabs. After a certain day, he says, the wife may withdraw if she pleases. The following instances are evidence of the survival of this type down to the present day. In Sunan, a town fifteen days from Mocha in South Arabia, a temporary form of marriage still exists. It is described as follows:
In all the streets there are brokers for wives, so that a stranger who has not the conveniency of a house in the city to lodge in, may marry and be made a free burgher for a small sum. When the man sees his spouse and likes her, they agree on the price and term of weeks, months or years, and then appear before the Kadi (qadhi), or judge of the place, and enter their names and terms in his book, which costs a shilling or thereabout. And joining hands before him the marriage is valid, for better or for worse, till the expiration of the term agreed upon. And if they have a mind to part or renew the contract, they are at liberty to choose for themselves what they judge most proper; but if either wants to separate during the term limited, there must be a commutation of money paid by the separating party to the other according as they can agree; and so they become free to make a new marriage elsewhere.1
In Mecca, whither throngs of pilgrims regularly resort, some of whom tarry for longer or shorter spaces of time, marriages of similarly short duration are still entered into; and women go thither from Egypt with the avowed purpose of entering into such alliances.2
The unions described in the Mu’allakat poems were perhaps of
1	Quoted by Wilken in Het Matriarchaat bij de oude Arabieren, p. 15 from Hamilton’s New Account of the East Indies, I, 52, 53.
2	See C. Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka, Haag, 1888-9, Vol. II, p. 5 fL, and 108-112, and S. M. Zwemer’s Arabia, the Cradle of Islam, New York (Revell), 1900, p. 41. Zwemer is, however, dependent on Hurgronje. In Somaliland, where the native customs have been shaped by Arabic immigration, till it is not easy to tell always how much is native and how much is not, divorce is very common. Cf. Siidarabische Expedition, Bd. I, Die Somali-Sprache von Leo Reinisch, Wien, 1900, p. 109.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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this character.1 The poets clearly did not belong to the tribes of the women whose charms they sang and whom they visited, and it is also evident that in some of the cases the relatives of the women were hostile to the lovers. In such cases the poets carried on the liaison at the risk of their lives. The alliances were temporary, and when the tribes moved apart they were abruptly terminated. All that remained to the poets were the memories renewed by the sites where the tents of their inamorata had stayed.
About the time of Mohammed (but how long before we do not know) polygamy was to some extent prevalent in Arabia. This the prophet endeavored to regulate by laying down the law that a man should not have more than four wives.2 He permitted, however, as many slave-girl concubines as a man was able to own. He also advised that this number should be further restricted if a man felt that he could not do justice to more than one. Later Mohammedan lawyers have made this last provision the basis of a contention that the prophet really intended to establish monogamy. The fact that the prophet by special revelations permitted himself to contract considerably more than four marital alliances does not prove that he was not endeavoring to reduce to a minimum irregularities of the marriage state which had existed at an earlier time. He did, however, permit divorce for any cause, at the will of the husband, and assumed that divorces would be frequent. For example, Ali, the husband of Fatima, the daughter of the prophet, married, including all that he married and divorced, more than 200 women. Sometimes he included as many as four wives in one contract, and divorced four at one time taking four others in their stead.3 A certain Mughayrah b. Sha’abah is reported to have married eighty women in the course of his life,4 while Mohammed b. At-Tayib,the dyer of Baghdad, who died in the year A.H. 423, at the age of eighty-five, is said to have married in all more than 900 women.
1	See Poem of Imr ul-Kais (1st Mu’allakat), line 25 if.; Poem of Labid (4th Mu’allakat), lines 20 and 21; Poem of Amru ibn-Kalthum (5th Mu’allakat) lines 17-22; Poem of Antarah (6th Mu’allakat), lines 4, 10 to 12; also Poem of Harith (7th Mu’allakat) lines 1-9.
2	Sura 3348, Sura 651“6.
3	Cf. Lane’s translation of the Thousand and One Nights, I, 318 if., and Wilken’s Het Matriarchaat bij de oude Arableren, p. 18.
4	Ibid.104
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If he began his marital career at the age of fifteen, he must have had on the average nearly thirteen new wives a year through his whole life.1 This liberty is exercised in Arabian countries still. Palgrave relates that the Sultan of Qatar in eastern Arabia married a new wife every month or fortnight, on whom the brief honors of matrimony were bestowed for a like period, and who was then retired on a pension.2 Doughty also tells3 how Zeyd, his host, a petty sheik of the Bedawi, not only permitted one of his wives to be courted by another Arab, but offered to divorce her that Doughty might marry her.
There are traces in the records of early Semitic life of the existence of matrilineal descent. For example, Abraham and Sarah were children of the same father, but of separate mothers (see Genesis 20:12). The Semitic taboo which prohibited the marriage of real brothers and sisters goes far back into prehistoric times. The fact that Abraham and Sarah, although children of the same father, were honored in Hebrew thought by every subsequent century as husband and wife, indicates that at the time when they were believed to have lived their descent was reckoned through the mother. Joseph’s sons born of Egyptian wives were not regarded as members of Israel’s clan until formally adopted by him (see Genesis 48:5,6). Similarly it is implied (see II. Samuel 13:13) that Tamar, David’s daughter, might legally have become the wife of his son Amnon. It is evident, therefore, that in some cases, even in the time of David, descent was reckoned through the mother. Such unions were contracted and apparently regarded as legal in Judea down to the time of the prophet Ezekiel. This prophet disapproved of them (see Ezekiel 22:11). His protest against them indicates that they had survived until his time, for one protests neither against the saloon nor the Eighteenth Amendment if neither is in existence. Tabnith, King of Sidon, who reigned as late as the Persian period, married his father’s daughter.4 Clearly, therefore, there lay back of the ancient Israelites and Phoenicians a custom of recognizing descent
1	Ibid.
2	Central and Eastern Arabia, II, 232, 233.
3	Arabia Deserta, I, 320, 321. Zeyd had once before found a husband for a divorced wife of his; see ibid., 237.
4	Cf. CIS., Pt. 1, Vol. 1, No. 3, 11.13-15.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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through the mother. The late Julius Wellhausen observed that in the genealogies of the Pentateuch the J document reckons descent through the mother, while in the P document it is traced through the father.1
W. Robertson Smith and Noldeke adduced considerable evidence to show that the matrilineal descent had existed in other parts of the Semitic world. The points made by W. Robertson Smith are as follows: (1) The word rahim, womb, is the most general word for kinship, and points to a primitive kinship through the mother. (2) The custom called ’acica, by which a child is consecrated to the god of his father’s tribe, cannot have been primitive. It must have sprung up in a state of transition to insure the counting of the offspring to the father’s side of the house. (3) Cases occur in the historical period in which a boy when grown attaches himself to his mother’s tribe. The poet Zohair is a case in point, and Arabic antiquarians appear to have known that such cases were not uncommon.2 (4) The fear that sons would choose their mother’s clans led men who were wealthy to marry within their own kin. (5) The relation between a man and his maternal uncle is still considered closer than between a man and his paternal uncle. (6) In the Arabic genealogical tables metronymic groups are still found. (7) In Aramaic inscriptions found at Hegra metronymic clans appear.3
Noldeke also noted that in the religious texts of the Mandaeans a man is described as the son of his mother, which indicates that among them there was a matrilineal method of reckoning kinship.4
Peiser also pointed out many years ago that among the Babylonians, a man could if he chose renounce his family and join the kindred of his wife, which is a relic of the same custom.
With reference to the social organization of the primitive Hamites we know much less than we do of the Semites, partly because the cradle-land of the Hamites was further removed from the nations who produced the Bible and the Greek and Roman historians, and partly because no Hamitic tribes have survived untouched by the civilization of other places. There is, nevertheless, some slight evidence
1	Nachrichten d. Kgl. Gesell. d. Wiss. zu Gott. 1893, p. 478, n.2.
2	Cf. Smith’s Kinship, 2nd ed. 1903 pp. 156 S.
3	Cf. CIS., Pt. II, Vol. 1, Nos. 198 and 209. See also Smith’s Kinship, pp. 313-316.
4	Monatsschrift, 1884, p. 304.106
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that polyandry has existed in some parts of the Hamitic area. For example, a story picked up by Leo Reinisch1 among the ‘Afars or Dankalis relates how some women of that tribe came to their ruler and asked that they might be permitted to have more than one husband. When asked why they wished this permission they said “one husband is for us as smoke which rises from a fire and does not satisfy us”. The story goes on to tell how their chieftain denied their request. It is hardly probable, however, that in a land where tradition and custom controls the thought of everyone that such a request should have been made at all, if back of it there had not been some consciousness that the practice desired had once been in existence. Had more been known concerning the organization of the family life of the earliest Egyptians possibly we might find this hint of conditions among the earlier ‘ Afars paralleled in early Egyptian society. The archaeological remains from prehistoric Egypt show that the early population of that country had passed through many centuries of evolution before the earliest historical inscriptions were written.2 The earliest inscriptions, too, are almost barren of genealogies which throw light on this interesting point. If, as indicated above in Chapter I, the Hamitic race was developed in the region now occupied by the Sahara Desert, as that land was gradually desiccated, it is probable that the similar desert conditions produced among the Hamites, therefore, the same variations from the normal family type which they produced in Arabia.
There is some slight evidence that among some of the ancient Egyptians who, it will be remembered, were Hamites, descent was reckoned through the mother. During the 18th Egyptian dynasty the throne of Egypt was occupied by several kings who, although the sons of kings, did not have royal mothers. The first of these was Thothmes I,3 king of Egypt from about 1550 to 1501 B.C. He was the son of Amenophis I, but not of a royal mother. Amenophis’s queen was named Ahmose and was the daughter of Ahmose I, the founder of the dynasty. Thothmes did not feel his throne secure
1	Leo Reinisch, Die Afar-Sprache I. Wien, 1885, p. 8 f.
2	K. S. Sanford and W. J. Arkell, Palxolithic Man and the Nile-Fayum Divide, Chicago, 1929, ch. V; also Petrie’s Prehistoric Egypt, London, 1920; also above, ch. Ill, p. 89ff.
3	James H. Breasted, A History of Egypt, 2nd ed. New York, 1909, pp. 255, 266, 269.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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until he had married his half-sister Ahmose. The only issue of this marriage to survive was the famous queen Hat-shep-sut. Although Thothmes I had many sons of secondary wives, so strong was the feeling that only the descendant of a royal mother should occupy the throne of Egypt that he had Hat-shep-sut proclaimed crown princess some years before his death. The story of the family tangle which resulted is differently interpreted by different historians. But whether with some we regard Thothmes II as holding his crown by virtue of his marriage with Hat-shep-sut, or, with Breasted,1 regard Thothmes III as having real title to the throne by reason of his marriage with her, or believe that Thothmes II and III were brothers who successively validated their title to the throne by having her as their consort, her whole career is evidence that at this period the title to the throne of Egypt rested upon one’s descent from a royal mother. Testimony to the same fact is found in the later history of Amenophis IV (Ikhnaton) and his successors. Amenophis IV had no sons, only daughters, and two of his sons-in-law, Sakere2 and Tut-ank-amen3 (whose name has in recent years become a household word) both of whom succeeded him for a short time, owed his title to the throne to the fact that his wife was the daughter of this line of kings. Further, upon Tut-ank-amen’s death the throne was secured for at least three years by Eye4 whose sole legitimate title to the throne seems to have been that he had married Amenophis’s nurse, a woman named Tiy. This series of facts is evidence of a matrilineal descent in the royal family at Thebes, at the beginning, of the Empire period. In the case of Eye, it is true that the matrilineal descent appears in a most attenuated form, but the emphasis placed upon his alliance with Tiy, ludicrous as it may appear to the modern mind, is eloquent testimony to the point under consideration. The Egyptian nation, as pointed out in Chapter III, consisted at the beginning of many different tribes. The evidence just quoted is derived entirely from the nome of Thebes. We should guard ourselves against inferring that the conditions revealed prevailed in all parts of Egypt. It is, however, more than probable that among
1	Ibid., Chap. 15.
2	Breasted, op. cit.} p. 391.
'Ibid., p. 392.
*Ibid., p. 394.108	SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
at least some of the Hamites descent was reckoned through the mother.
These indications, slight as they are, make it probable that among the Hamites matrilineal descent did in prehistoric time exist to some extent. Some slight confirmation of this is afforded by Egyptian contracts. In contracts (numbers of which are now known through the recovery of inscribed papyri) the names of the mothers of the contracting parties and often the mother’s father are faithfully given, as well as the names of the fathers and the fathers’ fathers. This shows that even during the Ptolmaic times the name of the mother was so important that matrilineal descent was given almost equal weight with patrilineal descent. That could hardly have been had there not been a rather widespread custom in the earlier times of reckoning descent through the mother.1
It is a peculiar fact that in the Egyptian language the word shs, brother, is also the word for husband, and the word sht, sister, is the word for wife. Among the Semitic peoples, as among the races of the world generally, marriages between brothers and sisters were not allowed. It would, however, probably be wrong to infer from this verbal usage that in early Egyptian society or in early Hamitic society marriages between brothers and sister were common. The genealogies which we find in the Egyptian papyri do not indicate that marriages were of this type in the period from which the papyri come, or whether outside the royal family such marriages were at all frequent. Plainly, in the royal family from the earliest times such marriages were frequently made, probably for the purpose of securing a legitimate heir to the throne by descent through a royal mother. It is, however, doubtful whether they were often entered into by the common people. Though it is possible that, in those long centuries concerning which we have no records of these matters, such a marriage may have been the rule, it seems more probable that the extension of the terms brother and sister to mean husband and wife may have been due to the adaptations by the common people of the nomenclature employed by royalty.
For other parts of the Hamitic field we have no ancient informa-
1 Simply as concrete examples of that which occurs in an enormous number of papyri, the reader may consult George Milligan’s Selections from the Greek Papyri, Cambridge, 1912, nos. 20, 30, and 32.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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tion, and information from more modern sources as to the composition of the family is exceedingly slight. Ancient Greek or Roman writers who deal with North Africa were not particularly interested in social organizations. For example, Strabo in Book 17, Chap. 3 of his Geography treats briefly of Mauretania, as the country of the Moorish and Algerian Berbers was then called, but naturally gives us no information as to their social organization. Ibn Khaldoun’s history of the Berbers1 is occupied with accounts of the origin of the tribes and a history of the various dynasties which they produced, including Al-Mohads and Almoravide (Al-Murabit). Naturally from the Mohammedan point of view as well as in consequence of his early date Ibn Khaldoun was not interested in such questions as the position of the family, types of marriage, and patrilineal or matrilineal descent. His pages, accordingly, could hardly be expected to throw light on these questions.
The reports of such modern travelers among the Berbers as I have been able to examine indicate that among them monogamy is the rule. Such is the implication of Dr. Randall-Maclver,2 and of René Maunier,3 and of H. Simpson.4 The position of the wife is not, according to these writers, more elevated or secure than among other peoples of a similar degree of civilization. She is expected to bear children to her husband, and if she does not, is almost sure to be divorced and replaced by another.5 Franz Stuhlmann, who has made a study of the Berbers in the mountains of Southern Algeria, bears witness, however, to the fact that the tribes who were the subject of his research were prevailingly and faithfully monogamous.6 Simpson also bears testimony to the fact that among the Berber tribes with which he came in contact the reputation of the women is as a rule above reproach and the home life pure. One tribe, the
1	Ibn Khaldoun, Histoire des Berbères et des Dynasties Musulmanes de VAfrique Septentrionale; trans. from the Arabic by Le Baron de Slane, Alger, 1847, 2 vols; new ed. by Paul Casanova. Paris, 1925,.2 vols.
2	David Randall-Maclver, and Anthony Wilkin, Libyan Notes. London, 1901, p. 30.
3	René Maunier, La Construction Collective de la Maison en Kabylie. Paris, 1926, p. 14.
4	M. W. Hilton-Simpson, Among the Hill-folk of Algeria, p. 219 fi. London, 1921.
6 See Simpson, loc cit.
6 Franz Stuhlmann, Ein kulturgeschichtlicher Ausflug in den Aures (Atlas von Süd-Algerien). Hamburg, 1912; p. 27 ff., p. 33, p. 63 ff.110
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Walled-Abdi, formed a marked exception. Their women were much in demand as dancing women, divorce among them was frequent, and the reputation of the women not good. Apparently in all this region, descent is now reckoned through the father. It is difficult, however, at this distance to reason back to their primitive condition, so many waves of civilization, Phoenician, Roman, Mohammedan, and European have swept over their land.
The assumption of McLennan which was followed in Semitic Origins that matrilinear descent was a product of polyandry and that, therefore, its presence among Semites was a proof of a previous state of polyandry, is disproved by the study of the marriage customs of existing matrilineal peoples. A number of the tribes of Australia are matrilineal and their customs have been studied. There is evidence that group marriages have existed;1 something corresponding to thejus primae metis still exists among some tribes;2 warriors may be polygamous,3 but as a rule after marriage no one may have access to a woman without her husband’s consent.4 He may lend her to a guest or to a guest of the medicine man,5 if the one to whom she is loaned is not within the circle of those to whom marriage with the woman would be prohibited. Prenuptial connections on the part of girls in some parts were permitted, if not too public,6 in others discouraged but excused,7 and in others not practised.8 Among the Melanesians a large number of groups trace descent through the mother. Among them patrilinear descent, though known, is the exception rather than the rule, but anything like polyandry is unknown.9 For the purpose of our present study the two books that are most illuminating are those of Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society, New York, 1927, and The Sexual Life of Savages, New York, 1930. These books are based on the author’s intimate knowledge of the Trobriands of New Guinea,
1	See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 56 ff.
2	Spencer and Gillen, op, cit., 90-94, and A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of Southeast Australia} p. 205.
3	Howitt, op. cit., pp. 207, 216.
*Ibid., p. 258.
5	Ibid., p. 258.
6	Ibid., p. 232 f.
7	Ibid., p. 225.
Ubid., p. 233.
9 Spencer and Gillen, op. cit., ch. Ill and Howitt, op. cit., ch. V.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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among whom he has spent much time. The Trobriands reckon descent through the mother, having no knowledge of the function of the father in the procreation of a child. They believe that a spirit from a bush or some similar source enters the womb of the mother and causes pregnancy. Marriage is with them monogamous as a rule, and after marriage husband and wife are generally faithful to one another. Tribes are rigidly divided into sections or moieties between the members of which marriage must not take place, but, apart from the observance of this taboo, there is no prenuptial restriction to intercourse between the sexes. Boys and girls of a village play together in groups, wear little, if any clothing, and freely attempt in their games to copy that which they have observed their elders practise. For boys who have reached the age of puberty there are ‘bachelors’ houses’ where they regularly sleep and to which they bring any girl of like age whom they may be able to persuade to share their couch for the night. No stigma attaches to the members of either sex because of the exercise of this freedom. When once marriage has been contracted, however, it is monogamous and the marriage tie is honored with a good degree of continence.1 A study of the customs of these tribes makes clear the fact that matrilinear descent may exist in the midst of a great variety of details, but that it never presupposes the previous existence either of a general state of promiscuity or of polyandry. There is no reason, therefore, why matrilineal descent among the Hamites and Semites should be regarded as a product of such polyandry as can be shown to have existed among them. Indeed, the analogies from Melanesia and Australia would lead us to believe that Semitic matrilinear descent originated for other causes which we cannot now discern.
It is customary to speak of matrilinear descent as ‘matriarchy,’ but it is a mistake to suppose that among any people who reckoned descent in that way women were the rulers. After the death of a woman’s father, her eldest brother became the head of her family, and her husband, while not the head of the family of which he was the father, was, if the oldest son, the head of his sister’s family.2 It is now clear that matrilinear descent never creates a human society which, when its pattern is transferred to mythology or theology, would make goddesses supreme in a pantheon.
1	Chiefs only have several wives.
2	See, e.g., Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society, 9 ff.112
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Thirty years ago the writer believed that such acts of free love as Herodotus1 attributes to the Babylonians and such sacrifices of chastity as Lucian2 says occurred at the festival of Adonis near Byblos, and such institutions as the sacred prostitutes of Ishtar and Ashtart were all survivals of the slightly regulated relations of the sexes which had begun in a polyandrous society, and which had been then consecrated in the worship of the matriarchal mother goddess by religious custom and had consequently been perpetuated after, by the rise of a patriarchal system, a different code of mores had come into existence. It has now become evident to him that the religious customs and institutions in question originated in a circle of ideas connected with magic and in spite of marriage types, not because of them. It is clear from three different documents which have been interpreted only within the last twenty years that among the Babylonians and Semites water was the spermatozoa of the male god of fertility. Fruitful seasons required an abundant outpouring of water. Such an outpouring occurred at the rainy season or at the time of the rise of the rivers because then a god and goddess united in a marital union.3 In order to encourage such divine unions and so insure the fertility on which the life of the tribe depended, human sexual unions were indulged in that, by sympathetic magic, the gods might be induced to do the same. Since from time immemorial religious festivals had been held, a part of the celebration of which was the enactment of this ritual, and since it was a ritual which appealed to human passion, it would be natural for the restraints of the marriage tie to be set aside at such a time and the freest license permitted.4 In time such a religious practice would create the belief
1	Bk. I, 199.
2	De Syria Dea, §6.
3	These texts are a passage in Gudea’s Cylinder B (col. xvii, 2 ff.), translated in the writer’s Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, p. 251, in which the marital union is between Ningirsu and Bau; in his Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, no. 4, where the deities are Enlil and Ninlil; and in Langdon’s so-called Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the Flood, and the Fall of Man, in which the deities are Enki and Nintud. (Langdon has not understood the passage. For a correct translation see American Journal of Theology, XXI, p. 581.) In all these three cases the marital union of the deities is followed by an abundant outpouring of fertilizing water on the earth.
4	This has occurred in many parts of the world. Spencer and Gillen, op. cit., 98 f., cite the instance of an Australian tribe in which such license is obligatory and what in ordinaiy times are the strictest taboos of sexual intercourse are set aside. They are at a loss to account for it but, if we are not mistaken, it belongs to the psychological processes of which we are speaking.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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that in order to secure fertility in herself, a woman must pass from virginity by the aid of someone selected by sacred chance,1 or by cohabiting with a chieftain or a priest.2 It seems more than probable that the customs and institutions in question originated in the manner indicated, and that they have nothing to do with polyandry.3
That fraternal polyandry existed at times in Arabia the direct evidence cited above proves. Possibly at times in desert regions where the struggle for existence was particularly severe, there may have existed a Nair type of polyandry, but it was neither as extensive, as fundamental, or as influential as was formerly supposed.4
As already indicated, an interesting question in connection with the social organization of the early Hamito-Semites is the problem as to whether totemistic conceptions affected to any degree their social organization. The reasons which led W. R. Smith to believe that the Semites passed through a totemistic stage of development will be recounted below in Chapter V, where reasons will be given for rejecting the theory. The Semitic settlers in Egypt, though themselves settled in a totemistic land, appear as the only non-totemistic tribes in that land—a condition which could hardly have
1	As in Herodotus, I, 199.
2	Among the Australians it is not always a king or priest, but certain relatives; see Spencer and Gillen, op. cit., p. 92 ff.
3	The view taken in the text raises the question of the relation of magic and religion. Magic is primitive man’s science—mistaken science, because founded on false assumptions, but still science. It is the writer’s belief that magic preceded religion—that man believed that he could control the spirits about him and make them work his will. When experience taught him that there were spirits that could not be so coerced, he then began to intercede and propitiate; that was the birth of religion. In order, however, to make assurance doubly sure, the old magical rites were continued. A recent writer has said: “Men realize long before they abandon it that magic does not work, but they cannot analyse themselves, and so they confuse the issue and imperil the solution. They refuse to abandon a practice which stands or falls by intellectual tests, by objective results in the physical world, because subconsciously they realize that the practice is derived from a conduct pattern which used to assuage their psychic needs. They apprehend their need, but so little can they define and isolate it that they cannot see that magic itself is an attempt to isolate the economical and physical benefit and to leave the psychological association, which was the only real benefit, aside as a by-product.” (Gerald Heard, Social Substance of Religion, New York, 1930, p. 96.)
4	Those wishing to compare Semitic marriage customs with the Nair type, should read the long and interesting account of that form of marriage in Westermarck’s History of Human Marriage, 5th ed., New York, 1922, chs. xxix and xxx in Vol. III.114
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
occurred, had they themselves been totemistic before their migration from Arabia. On the other hand, the animal gods of the Hami-tic clans of Egypt, detailed account of which is give below in Chapter VI, prove that the early tribes of that race held one of the most important conceptions of totemism. They were certainly totemistic as regards their gods. The totemism of the Amerinds and of the Australians, however, had social consequences. It determined often what men and women could not marry. Whether the totemism of the primitive Hamites carried with it social consequences of a similar sort, we have no means of knowing. It is quite possible that it did, but so little evidence of the conceptions which governed Hamitic marriage in this far-off time has survived, that it is impossible to determine. It is conceivable that Hamitic totemism differed from that of the Australians and Amerinds in being religious only and in having no application to the organization of families. At all events we can at present trace no social consequences of totemism in either branch of the Hamito-Semitic race.
Turning now to the economic life of the Hamito-Semitic people, we seek first to ascertain the means of sustenance on which the primitive Semites in Arabia depended. Fishing could never have been an important feature of life in Arabia except upon the seacoasts, for the absence of large rivers, and, indeed, except in the oases, of water of any sort, would render it impossible. Hunting has, down to the present time, played some part in Arabian life. Hares, wild goats, gazelles, wild cows, and ostriches may still be found in small numbers; and the Solluby tribe, who have no real home, but pay tribute to all the tribes, still live largely by hunting.1 If the theory of Wallace,2 that this region once contained larger forests and more abundant water, be true, it can only have been many, many centuries ago. Probably the camel and the goat, to which he ascribes the destruction of the forests, were in Arabia before the Semites were. It is tolerably certain that, since the Semites entered it, the conditions of the peninsula have been practically what they are today. Here and there oases are found where a little water produces grass, trees, and vegetation, but in many of these, nothing of importance is
1	See Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, I, 281 ff., 362 if., 487 if., II, 9 ft, 70, and 216-218.
2	Alfred Russell Wallace, The Geographic Distribution of Animals, Vol. I, p. 200.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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produced without irrigation.1 Here and there, however, palms grow without artificial watering.2 Much of the country is covered with volcanic mountains, from which protrude bare crags of igneous rocks, and which produce almost no vegetation. The intervening plains are covered with dry gravel, which is exceedingly unproductive, while between the central and eastern portions of the peninsula there extend immense deserts of shifting sand.3 The lack of water and the intense heat must have always made it difficult for savage man to venture far from a spring.
It is clear that in such a country no large population could live by hunting; the game itself would find the conditions of life too severe to exist in large quantities. The Semite must have been compelled to domesticate the goat and camel at an early date, in order to obtain the milk which is so important a part of Arabian diet. The date palm, which extended, so Fischer and Hehn declare,4 in prehistoric times, from the Canaries to Penjab, and which now produces the staple article of diet of so much of the Arabian population, must have early revealed its virtues to the Semitic mind, and thus called forth Semitic ingenuity for its cultivation.5 Thus in
1	On Arabian oases, cf. Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, I, 92 ff. and 272 ff.; Palgrave’s Central and Eastern Arabia, I, 20, 48 ff., 258 ff., II, 360; Blunt’s Pilgrimage to Nejd, I, 113; and Euting’s Tagbuch einer Reise in Inner-Arabien, pp. 68, 121, 123 ff.
2	See Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, II, 10, and Theobald Fischer in Petermann’s Mittheilungen, Erganzungsband XIV, No. 64, p. 10.
3	Cf. Wellsted, op. cit., I, 241; Palgrave, op. cit., II, 132 ff., 136 ff., 153, 356-358; Blunt, op. cit., I, 67, 156-185; Doughty, op. cit., I, 419-422, 424, 425; and Euting, op. cit., p. 142 ff.
4	See Theobald Fischer in Petermann’s Mittheilungen, Erganzungsband XIV. No. 64, p. 1, and Hehn’s Culturpjlanzen und Hausthiere, 6th ed., p. 273.
5	There should be no real doubt that the date palm was known to the primitive Semites in ancient Arabia. It extended in prehistoric times from the Canaries to Penjab (see Hehn’s Culturpjlanzen und Hausthiere, 6th ed., p. 273), or “from the Atlantic to the Himalayas’* (so Theobald Fischer, in Petermann’s Mittheilungen, Ergan-zungzband, XIV, No. 64, p. 1), and “belonged to the desert and oasis peoples of the Semites” (Hehn, op. cit., p. 263). The fact was doubted by von Kremer and Guidi, as noted above in ch. I, on linguistic grounds, but without sufficient reason. It is true the Semitic tongues have no common word for palm; it is gishimmaru in Babylonian and Assyrian, diqld in Aramaic, tamar in Hebrew, nakhlun in Arabic, and tamrt in Ethiopic; but as we pointed out above (p. 4), Bertin has correctly observed (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Vol. XI, pp. 423-433), that it is the animals and plants which are most common which always have the most names, and that some of116
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Arabia, as has so often been the case in other countries where the conditions of life are hard, necessity compelled man at an early period to form a somewhat advanced social organization. The conditions in which such relations between the sexes as we have described could exist, even if, with Hilderbrand and Giddings, we recognize that they can exist only in a pastoral and semi-agricultural life, must have been present in the peninsula not long, at most, after the Semitic occupation of the country.
The importance of the date palm, for the sustenance and development of Semitic life, can hardly be overestimated. The palm leaves are today plaited into string-mats and baskets, and the bark into ropes. The dates themselves form a staple article of Arabian diet, some of the people having almost no other source of sustenance;1 they are exported as far as Damascus and Baghdad,2 and in return
these may have survived in one dialect and others in others. It will be noticed that the Hebrew and Ethiopic words for palm tree are ^identical. Such a resemblance in two such widely separated dialects of the North and South Semites shows, as Hom-mel long ago pointed out {Die Namen der Saugthiere, p. 412), that this word was the name of it in the primitive Semitic tongue. This is confirmed by the fact that in Arabic tamr means “date,” and then “fruit” in general, while tamara means to “feed with dates.” The use of tamr as “date” must have been a specialization of the term for “palm,” when nakhlun, the word for “tree,” was narrowed to mean “palm tree.” That nakhlun, the more general term, could be narrowed to the palm shows that that was the tree par excellence. The Babylo-Assyrian term is apparently borrowed from a non-Semitic people. Whence the Aramaic daqld came, it is not easy to say. Yaqut (in his Geographical Dictionary, II, 580) speaks of a place, Daqala, in south Arabia, “where date palms are found,” which would show that this term was also used in Sabaea. Perhaps it is this fact which led Robertson Smith to say {Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., p. 109), that the date palm was introduced into Arabia from Yemen and Syria—a statement impossible of proof. Surely the work daqld is not proof. One could more plausibly prove from tamr that it was introduced from Palestine and Ethiopia, which would surely be false. Hommel, when he wrote Die Namen der Saugthiere, held that the date palm was a native of Babylonia, but later, that it was introduced thither from Arabia (Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, I, 214). It is much more likely, as Hehn says, that the palm was native throughout all North Africa and Southwestern Asia. The culture of it would probably arise first in an oasis country like Arabia, and may have been introduced thence to Babylonia, as Hommel believes, and also to Egypt, as Hehn thinks {op. cit., p. 274). Theobald Fischer, the scholar who has most thoroughly investigated the date palm, holds that Arabia was the original home of its culture, and it was thence introduced into Babylonia and Egypt {op. cit., p. 11). The position taken in the text is therefore thoroughly justified.
1	Cf. Doughty, Arabia Deserta, I, 148, II, 178.
2	Central and Eastern Arabia, I, 60.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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the Arabs are able to obtain a few articles from the outside world. The stones are ground and used for the food of cows, sheep, and camels;1 syrup and vinegar are made from old dates, and, by some who disregard the Coran, a kind of brandy;2 and altogether the statement of Palgrave is not too strong: “They are the bread of the land, the staff of life, and the staple of commerce.”3 They still serve, in some parts of Arabia, as the standard of value, as cattle do among shepherd peoples.4 They cast a dense shade, which, in contrast to the hot Arabian atmosphere, must be exceedingly grateful.5 Europeans regard the date as a not altogether pleasing staple of diet;6 but in a land which produces so sparingly it is regarded as a divine gift. An Arabic proverb declares that a good housewife knows how to set before her husband a new preparation of date food each day in the month.7 Much thought has to be devoted to the culture of the date palm in many places in order to make it grow. It many parts of the peninsula it must be irrigated, and in some parts water for the purpose must be conducted considerable distances.8 The female flowers of the date palm must be artificially impregnated from the male flowers, unless a male tree happens to grow where the winds will naturally carry the pollen to the female flowers. This is now sometimes done by planting a male tree in the midst of the female ones; but even as late as the early part of the present century, Wellsted observed in the Sinaitic peninsula an old method, once perhaps more widely used in Arabia, of fastening a bunch of the male flowers on a branch exposed to the wind, and so placed that it would disseminate the pollen over the flowers to be
1	In addition to the references in the two preceding notes, cf. Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, I, 94, 164 ff., 241, 288 ff., II, 112, 122, 419; Euting’s Tagbuch einer Reise in Inner-Arabien, pp. 52, 53; Palgrave, op. cit., I, 263; and Zwemer, Arabia, p. 123. For the statement about vinegar and brandy, see Zwemer.
2	Ibid.
3	Central and Eastern Arabia, I, 60.
4	Doughty, op. cit., I, 332.
5	Wellsted, op. cit., I, 94.
6	Palgrave, op. cit., I, 60; and Doughty, op. cit., I, 148.
7	Erdekunde, von Carl Ritter, Berlin, 1779-1857, XIII, 804. Cf. Zwemer’s Arabia, p. 123.
8	Cf. Wellsted, op. cit., I, 92-94; Euting, op. cit., pp. 52, 53; and Glaser in Mit-theilungen der vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, 1897, pp. 373-376 and 425. Compare also the evidence of the documents published by Rhodokanakis in his Katabanische Texte zur Bodenwirtschaft, Wien, 1920 and 1922.118
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fertilized.1 In Mesopotamia the method which the ancient sculptures attest, and which is still employed,2 was to climb the tree and sprinkle the pollen over the flowers. This insured the fertilization of each flower. That this tree and its culture played a very important part in the development of ancient Semitic life we may therefore well believe. Mohammed is said to have addressed his followers thus: “Honor your paternal aunt, the date palm. It was named our paternal aunt because it was created of what was left from the clay of Adam; and it resembles mankind because it stands upright in figure and height, and it distinguishes between its male and female, and has the peculiarity (among plants) of impregnating the latter.”3 This high estimation of the palm is confirmed by an Aramaic inscription from Taima, which, though much mutilated, shows that a part of the fruit of the date orchard was consecrated to a god,4 and by the further fact that Nakhla, one of the seats of the worship of the goddess Al-Uzza,5 derived its name from the date palm. The connection of the date palm with the goddess will be established in the next chapter, and it will there appear that the part played by this tree in the evolution of Semitic civilization was of the greatest importance. Fischer declares that the role which the Arabic people have played in the world’s history is closely bound up with this, its scared tree.6 If we substitute Semitic people for Arabic, the statement remains equally true. We can understand, from the economic value of this tree and from the demand which its artificial propagation made upon the Semite, as an increasing population made such artificial culture necessary, something of the importance it would assume in his eyes; but to fully appreciate it, we must learn the divine significance which he attached to it, the reflex of his own social life which he saw in it, and how he attributed
1	Wellsted, op. cit.} II, 12.
2	Zwemer’s Arabia, the Cradle of Islam, p. 123.
3	Reported by Qazwini (1203-83, cf. Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, Bd. I, Weimar, 1898, p. 481). The text is published in S. de Sacy’s Chrestomathie arabe, III, 175, French translation, III, 395.
4	Cf. CIS., Pt. II, Vol. I, No. 113.
5	Cf. Wellhausen’s Reste arabische Heidentums, 2d ed., p. 36; and Hebraica, X, 64.
6	“Wir können daher sagen, das auch die weltgeschichtliche Rolle, welche das arabische Volk gespielt hat, in engstem Zusammenhänge mit diesem heiligen Bäumst eht.” Petermann’s Mittheilungen, Ergänzungsband XIV, Heft, 64, p. 10.EARLY SOCIAL LIFE
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to it all his knowledge, especially the knowledge of sex and procreation. The social and religious life of the people are always interwoven. These conceptions, which are so important for the social life, as well as the religious feasts, which form so large a part of the social intercourse of any people, will be considered later.V
RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
THE preceding pages have disclosed to us the beginnings of the Egyptian and Babylonian peoples at a remote period of antiquity. The thesis of E. B. Tylor, that all peoples have, at an early period of their development, passed through a stage of thought in which they conceived the world to be peopled with innumerable spirits, is now generally taken for granted by students of religion. At first these spirits appear to have been vague and ill defined. Men did not individualize them sufficiently to give them names. Of this stratum of human thought we obtain glimpses in the Hamito-Semitic territory. The Arabian jinn, a word designating a group of spirits, numerous, ill defined, unindividualized, and at first morally undifferentiated, is a good example of the stage of thought under consideration. While the earliest strata of religious thought recorded in the religious literature of Egypt and Babylonia have passed beyond this stage, they nevertheless presuppose it, as will be shown below in greater detail. It has survived in its purest form in Arabia, though now Mohammedanism has transformed the jinn into demons. One nevertheless finds traces of the earlier conceptions in the descriptions of Arabian heathenism which have been preserved. The jinn (plural, jindn) might take the form of various beasts, might play tricks upon men, or serve them, but were never individualized by receiving a personal name.1
In the lapse of time many of these spirits were individualized and named. They were those who were believed to have their habitat in localities frequented by men, or who dwelt in regions near human abodes. Doubtless the first relation which these ancient peoples believed themselves to have established with these spirits was some form of compulsion by charms, or what we now call magic. Later, when
1 For fuller descriptions see J. Wellhausen, Reste arabische Heidentums, 2te Aus., Berlin & Leipzig, 1927, 148-159, and W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, London, 1894, 120 f.
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it was found that some spirits did not always succumb to force, endeavors were made to secure their favor and help by means of propitiation and gifts. It was then that religion was born. Whether the Hamito-Semitic peoples began to individualize their spirit-neighbors and name them, before religion began or not, we cannot now determine, and, for the purposes of this investigation, it is immaterial. Religion and magic have existed side by side until the present time, and it is possible that no appreciable interval of time separated their beginnings.
To the spirits of localities with which the world was believed to be peopled, there were added, from the earliest times in which we can gain any definite knowledge of these peoples, the spirits of their own dead—especially the spirits of ancestors. While these were sometimes venerated, and, in later time, appealed to for aid, the spirits of the dead were more often feared. To this day the fear of ghosts is almost universal, and in the earliest epochs it must have been quite so.
Little definite knowledge of religion can be acquired until written records come to our aid, but some dim outlines are revealed by anthropological materials. For the Hamitic field our earliest glimpses are obtained from the graves of the Badarian civilization in Egypt.1 Magic had developed among the Badarians, for they believed profoundly in amulets. This is shown by the animal heads attached to the bodies of the dead. Apparently the gazelle and the hippopotamus were believed to possess attributes that were very beneficial in this regard. These animals were objects of veneration and could afford the wearer of their heads protection.
The Badarians appear also to have venerated other animals. The dog, jackal, ox, sheep, and goat, were wrapped in matting and given burial like human beings. Belief in the survival of human beings after death is attested by offerings of food placed in the graves. Wrapped in their everyday clothes, they were laid down as if sleeping and covered with what may have been a replica of their home. For some reason it was considered desirable that they should be facing the setting sun. With them were placed their toilet articles and the implements of their craft. It has been generally believed
1 See Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson, The Badarian Civilisation, London, 1928, p. 42.122
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that the implements were provided for the spirit’s use in the other life, but recently it has been suggested that they were placed in the tomb so that, if the spirit visited it, he might find there all that he needed, and so not trouble the living.1 If this were the real motive, their presence in the grave was due to fear of the dead rather than care for their comfort.
What is signified by the animal burials at Badari constitutes an interesting problem. Does it mean that these animals were sacred? Have we here evidence of the existence of totemism at this early time? W. R. Smith, who believed totemism to have been universal, thought he could muster evidence to show that the Semites had passed through a totemistic stage in the process of their evolution.2 The writer once believed this,3 though he now recognizes that the evidence for it is not as decisive as he once thought. That a form of animal worship existed among the ancient Egyptians, is too well known to need demonstration. Abundant evidence of it is presented by every book describing the religion of that land. The worship of animals lasted down to Greek and Roman times4 and excited the notice, not to say the ridicule, of most ancient foreign writers on Egypt.
There is, in the judgment of the writer, every reason why this should be called totemism. Totemism has, in the past, been too narrowly defined. Its manifestations differ in Australia and among the American Indians—the two centers in which it has survived to modern times. Totemism as crystallized in the animal cults of ancient Egypt differed in many respects from both the Australian and the Amerind type, but similarly attributed to animals supernatural or supernormal characteristics, and doubtless was the product of the same general phase of human thought which produced totemism. If the Hamites were totemistic, and the Semites were an offshoot of the Hamites, W. R. Smith’s belief5 that the sporadic survivals which
1	The Badarian Civilisation, p. 42.
2	See his Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, ch. vii, and Religion of the Semites, 137 ff.
3	Cf. Semitic Origins, p. 35 ff.
4	For the Egyptian animal worship of the Greek and Roman periods, see the masterly work of Theodor Hopfner, Der Tierkult der alten Ägypter, Wien, 1914.
8 The arguments for Semitic totemism were summarized by the writer in Semitic Origins, p. 35 ff., and need not be repeated here.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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he found among the Semites, and which he explained as betokening an earlier totemism, might seem to be justified. It is, however, a significant fact, not hitherto noted, I believe, by any scholar, that those Egyptian nomes whose chief deities were of Semitic origin, or which can plausibly be shown to have been settled from Semitic territory, had no sacred animal. This fact now seems to the writer to make the view that Hamitic totemism survived in that offshoot of the Hamitic race which became Semites so doubtful that it must be abandoned. The facts collected by W. R. Smith must, I think, be explained in some other way.
As the early clans continued to live in definite localities and came to believe that their acquaintance with certain spirits advanced, the spirits assumed individuality in their thought and were given individual names. While but one of these was regarded as the tutelary spirit or god of each clan, the number of such spirits that were individualized and named was at first much larger than the number that later developed into important deities. The evidence for this is much clearer for Babylonia than for Egypt, but enough has been enshrined in the earliest literature of Egypt to establish the fact for that country. Thus in the Pyramid Texts we find deities that do not appear elsewhere, or appear but rarely, and the nature and functions of which are frequently unknown. Examples are Hmn,* a god whose nature is unknown;2 Swnt,z of whom the same must be said;4 Ymnw,5 of whom all that can be said is that he (or she) was eine der acht Urgottheiten6 of the pyramid age, distinct from Ymn (Amon) of Thebes; Krkr and Krkrw,7 of whom all that is known is that their names are followed by the determinative for deity;8 also
1	K. Sethe, Die Altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte, Leipzig, 1908-19, Vol. II, p. 69, Sp. 483, 1013d.
2	Cf. A. Erman and H. Grapow, Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache, Leipzig, 1925, III, 95.
3	Sethe, op. cit., p. 107, Sp. 506, 1094c.
4	Cf. Wörterbuch, III, 428.
6 Sethe, op. cit., p. 108, Sp. 506, 1095b.
6	Cf. Wörterbuch, I, 84.
7	Sethe, op. cit., 109, Sp. 506, 1095d. To this should be added Hst, the spirit of the harp, and Sfsft, the spirit of consideration (Sp. 506, 1096a); cf. Wörterbuch, III, 165 and IV, 469 f.
8	Cf. Wörterbuch, V, 66.124
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Dwynw,1 and Yhtnty2 of whom the same must be said. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge finds 142 deities in the Pyramid Texts.3 In this list there is a large number of deities which play but a small part in the religion of later times. In this class I would place Dwywf who was apparently a tadpole-god;5 Ymt-t,6 goddess of Buto;7 Spdw,8 god of the twentieth nome of the Delta;9 Y^hs,10 the god of Upper Egypt;11 Dw^mwtf12 (“The-morning-is-his-mother”), Ymst (Var., Smt)y and Kbshnwf,lz who, with Hpy, or Apis, were the four children of Horus who acted as guardian spirits of the dead.14 In the references to these deities we have glimpses of some of the manifold spirits out of the number of which the great gods of Egypt were developed. Of the four sons of Horus, Apis is the only one that played an important part in the history of the Egyptian religion. He survived along with Osiris as a god of the Underworld, and, in the compound )sir-hpy, or Serapis, survived well into the Christian era.
It must not be supposed that, as time elapsed and the great gods developed and absorbed the thought of the people, belief in the existence of a multitude of spirits was abandoned. On the contrary that belief continued to the latest times, and, as time passed, in some respects the number of the spirits increased. The number of departed ancestors who were venerated was continually increased by the inevitable process of death; as epithets were applied to deities the epithets gradually came in the popular thought to designate a
1	Sethe, op. cit., p. Ill, Sp. 506, 1098a.
2	Ibid., p. 115, Sp. 507, 1102a, and Wörterbuch, I, 123.
3	See his Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1904, I, 79-83. Even if one does not always agree with the readings of Sir Wallis, his enumeration serves to indicate how numerous the deities of the pyramid age were.
4	Sethe, op. cit., p. 145, Sp. 511, 1155a.
5	Cf. A. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, Oxford, 1927, p. 466, I, 7 or 8.
6	Sethe, op. cit., p. 136, Sp. 510, 1139a.
7	W örterbuch, I, 78.
8	Sethe, op. cit., p. 57, Sp. 480, 994e; cf. Gardiner, M, 44 K (p. 473) and G, 13 (p. 459).
9	Wörterbuch, IV, 111.
10	Sethe, op. cit., p. 57, Sp. 480, 994c, and p. 122, Sp. 508, 112c.
11	Wörterbuch, I, 33.
12	Sethe, op. cit., p. 105, Sp. 505, 1092c; also p. 110, Sp. 506, 1097b.
13	Ibid., p. 195, Sp. 505, 1092 c. and p. Ill, Sp. 506, 1997c.
14	Wörterbuch, I, 88; IV, 70 and 119; and V, 31.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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different god from that known under the original name; and each new object, known or employed as civilization progressed, might, and often did, come to be regarded as possessing a spirit of its own. The memory of man has, however, limitations. As new spirits were added, many which had been venerated in former times were forgotten. Examples of this are to be seen in some of the unknown deities of the Pyramid Texts; nevertheless the number of spirits of various grades and kinds with which the Egyptians were thought to have possible relations were manifold.
In Babylonia the development of religious thought ran parallel with that in Egypt. The evidence for this, at least as known to the present writer, is much more abundant. In reviewing this evidence, it will be illuminating to begin with the list of deities and spirits compiled as school exercises by students in the ancient city of Surip-pak—a city which flourished in prehistoric Babylonia and sank into insignificance just at the dawn of the historical period. Doubtless the results of the excavation which is being carried on by the University Museum at Fara, the site of Surippak, will add much to our present knowledge, but that conducted by Andrae thirty years ago has acquainted us with the fact that no less than 740 gods and spirits were listed by the students in the scribal schools of Surippak at the dawn of history. These included spirits of almost everything known to the Babylonians of that time.1 There were present among the spirits venerated those who were prominent in every period of Babylonian history, but also many others. Beside Anu, the sky god, there is the star An. Five different water spirits are listed; there are spirits of shrines, spirits of fecundity, spirits of the deep, spirits of the bright sky, various mother spirits, spirits of various young animals, a spirit of the wall, bow spirits, fire spirits, reed spirits, tree spirits, gazelle spirits, spirits of various kinds of dun-animals, numerous house spirits, a variety of “lords” of different things, from En-lil (Lord of winds) and En-ki (Lord of the earth) to En-shar (Lord of the garden), lion spirits, sun spirits, foundation spirits, a spirit of shining bronze, boundary spirits, granary spirits,
1 These texts have been published by Anton Deimel under the title Schultexte aus Fara, Leipzig, 1923. The book is no. 43 of the Wissenschaftliche Verofentlichung der deutschen Orientgesellschaft. Our study is based on Deimel’s work which, on pages 9-20, contains a full list of the deities.126
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wind spirits, various lama-, or guardian spirits, spirits which are designated the “king” of this or that, various “carpenter” spirits, or spirits of crafts, numerous grain spirits, a large number of spirits which are called the “lady” of this or that, and a large number of goddesses whose designations begin with ninni (or ininni), and who are forms of the common Sumerian mother goddess. In addition to all these, numerous gods or spirits are listed, the nature of whom cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, be determined.
This cross-section of the thought of one Babylonian city is a guarantee of the state of religious thought in other Babylonian cities of the time. The world was, to the men of that age, peopled with spirits of all sorts, with whom it was important to maintain friendly relations. This document affords for the Mesopotamian valley more abundant evidence on this point than is known to the writer for Egypt, but enough has survived in Egypt to convince us that similar conceptions were entertained both among the Hamitic and Semitic peoples of this far-off time.
In Babylonia as in Egypt new deities were added as time advanced. Sometimes these were offshoots of older gods, caused by the use of epithets; sometimes they originated from the spirits of new phases of civilization; and sometimes they were the deities or spirits venerated by new immigrants into the country. As in Egypt, too, older spirits and deities were in the lapse of time forgotten, but in every period of history the number venerated was large. Professor Deimel made, some years ago, a collection of all those mentioned in the literature from every period which was at that time known, and the number exceeded 3300.1
It will be noted that this Babylonian list catalogues no spirits of springs, although among the Semites springs were sacred.2 At first this may seem strange, since there was such a strong Semitic element in Babylonia. In that country, however, the two rivers watered the land, and springs were practically unknown. Similar conditions existed in Egypt. That country also is almost totally lacking in springs and the veneration of water was confined almost to the waters of the Nile. One spring, however, even in the land of the Nile existed in Heliopolis (On) and was sacred to the god Re.3
1	See Deimel’s Pantheon Babylonicum, Rome, 1914.
2	Cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 135 ff.
3	Cf. A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 4 and 155.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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Among both Hamites and Semites, trees were regarded as sacred. In the religious texts of the Egyptians but little is said of this phase of their thought, just as almost nothing is said of their sacred animals; nevertheless sufficient evidence has survived to prove its existence. At Matariyeh,1 the site of ancient On, a sacred sycamore is still venerated. Its sacredness is now accounted for by the legend that the Holy Family sojourned under it during the flight to Egypt (Matt. 2:20), but the tree is doubtless a scion of one that was venerated on or near this locality from ancient times. On the walls of the temple at Gurneh three gods are portrayed inscribing the name of Ramses II on a sacred sycamore at On.2 In the Berlin Museum there is preserved a stele in which Nut is represented as seated in a palm tree from the midst of which she pours water for the deceased and his soul. Other representations of this or similar scenes are said to exist.3 It is probably this sacred palm that is alluded to in the following passage of the Pyramid Texts: “This Pepi advanced to the great island in the midst of the field of offering, over which the gods make the swallows fly. The swallows are the circumpolar stars.4 They give to this Pepi this tree of life on which they live, that ye (Pepi and the morning star) may live of it at the same time.”5 As the palm is the one tree of the region from which one could live, the reference, taken in connection with the picture just mentioned, is doubtless the palm, which is thus attested to have been the sacred tree, or a very sacred tree, among the Egyptians. In short, the palm appears here as the Egyptian tree of Paradise.
The numerous representations of trees on Babylonian and Assyrian seal cylinders and monuments attest, as several scholars have recognized, a primitive tree worship for the ancient Babylonians or their ancestors.6 This pictorial testimony is now confirmed by
1	Cf. G. A. Barton, A Year’s Wandering in Bible Lands, Philadelphia, 1904, p. 233, and Wiedemann, op. cit., p. 21.
2	Cf. Wiedemann, op. cit., p. 232.
3	Cf. Wiedemann, op. cit., p. 233.
4	The circumpolar stars excited the interest of the Egyptians because they never set as do other stars. Not knowing the astronomical cause of this, the Egyptians attributed to them more divine qualities than to other stars. They called them yhm wskw sb3w, “the stars that have no defect” or “failure,” i.e., “are immortal.”
5	Sethe, Pyramidentexte, II, Sp. 519, 1216; cf. J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, New York, 1912, p. 134.
6	See the numerous seals pictured in W. H. Ward’s Seal Cylinders of Western Asia, Washington, 1908; also his Seal Cylinders in the Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan,128
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the text from Surippak already quoted. While that text shows that the spirits of a number of trees were regarded as divine, in the pictorial representations the palm tree is most often figured. This is, in most instances, shown to be the female date palm by the hanging clusters of dates.* 1 Many of the representations on the monuments picture a winged being, sometimes with a human face, sometimes with an eagle’s face, holding in one hand a basket or bucket, and in the other a cone which he is applying to the tree. That the difference in sex of the date palms was known to the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians is attested by a fragment of a list of trees found in the library of Ashurbanipal, but which was probably copied from a Babylonian list of much greater antiquity, in which gishimmaru zikaru, or “the male date palm,” is distinguished from gishimmaru zinnishtu, or “the female date palm.”2 That the palm itself was regarded as divine is attested by a proper name of the Ur period, dgishimmar-ga-dumu-ni, “The-palm-tree deity—verily her son.”3 E. B. Tylor first suggested that the winged figures which apply the cones to the trees are representations of winds—personified as divine agencies—in carrying the pollen of the male flowers to the stigmata of the female flowers, to fertilize them.4 He found in these figures the explanation of the cherubim of Ezekiel and of Genesis, as well as of other parts of the Old Testament. This seemed especially appropriate, since Ps. 18:16, in a description of the coming of Yahweh on a thunder cloud, equates the cherub with the wind.
New York, 1909; also Leon Legrain, The Culture of the Babylonians from their Seals in the (University) Museumi Philadelphia, 1925, and the article by the same author in the Museum Journal, Dec., 1929. In this the seals from the earliest time discovered by Woolley at Ur are published. Of particular interest for our subject are Ward, Cylinders of Western Asia, nos. 388, 389 and 663-725, and Legrain, nos. 168, 435, 573, 586, 588, 594, 623, 672, 712, 744, 811 and 981; also Museum Journal, Sept.-Dee., 1929, p. 294, no. 81 and 296, no. 87.
1	In addition to the references in the preceding note, cf. Schrader in Monatsbericht d. kgl preus. Ak. d. Wiss. zu Berlin, 1882, p. 426 ff.
2	Cf. II R, p. 46, no. 2, 11.29, 30.
3	Cf. G. A. Barton, The Haverford Library Collection of Cuneiform Tablets, or Documents from the Temple Archives of Telloh, Pt. I, Philadelphia, 1905, PI. 25, no. 66, iii, 16. The name might also be rendered dsag-ga-dumu-ni, “The gracious goddess—her son,’’ “The gracious goddess” would then be Ininni or Ishtar, the mother-goddess of the Babylonians, who was closely associated with the palm.
4	See PSBA, XII, 383-393.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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This view has since been accepted by others,1 and affords a most satisfactory explanation of these interesting representations Some of these portray a fish god, i.e., Ea, in the act of performing this fecundation. In the legend of Oannes, as preserved in Berossos, and which is in reality a myth of Ea, a fish-like monster came, we are told, from the sea, and taught the Babylonians the beginnings of civilization. Among other arts he made them distinguish seeds, and taught them how to collect fruit. In his hands, therefore, the cone and bucket would properly have a place.2
That trees possess divine character is a belief which still survives in Arabia, where certain trees are thought to be inhabited by the jinn even to the present time.3 Such trees were probably in the pre-Islamic days regarded as the residences of gods, who, upon the introduction of Islam, shared the fate of other deities and were deposed to the rank of evil spirits. In like manner the Jews and early Christians regarded the gods of the heathen as demons.4 Sometimes, however, it is not jinn but angels who are thought to come down to tabernacles in the trees; and it is still the custom in parts of Arabia for the sick to go to trees which are thus visited, and offer sacrifice and prayer for the recovery of their health. The offering is usually a sheep or a goat, the blood is sprinkled, the flesh cooked at the place, a part of it is divided among the friends of the sick man, and a part left hanging on the branches of the tree. The worshipper then lies down and sleeps, confident that the angels will come in vision and speak precepts for his health so that he will rise whole.5 Such possessed trees are behung with old beads, votive shreds of calico, lappets of colored stuffs, and other such things.6 This is a relic of old Arabian heathenism, in which offerings were made in the same manner. The traditions tell that Mohammed referred to such a tree as “a tree to hang things on.”7
1	Cf. Jastrow’s Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 662, and Haupt in Toy’s Ezekiel in SBOT.. pp. 181-184.
2	The fertilization of the date palm in Mesopotamia has to be performed in part by hand unto the present time. (See Zwemer’s Arabia, the Cradle of Islam, p. 123.) This fact explains the anthropomorphic form of the cherub. The wind is conceived
as a supernatural man applying the fertilization by hand.
3	Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, I, 365.
4	Cf. Deut. 32:17 and I. Cor. 10:20.
5	Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, I, 449 ff.
6	Ibid.
7	Smith’s Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., p. 185.130
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Such traces of worship are not now found in connection with the palm tree in Arabia, but more often with the acacia, though at times with other trees and even with shrubs. Some evidences of the worship of the palm tree in ancient times are still extant. Tabari refers to the sacred date palm of Negran, where the tree was in all respects treated as a god.1 The residence of Al-Uzza at Nakhla, who was in reality an Athtar,2 is said by Ibn Abbas to have been a group of Samura trees, in one of which the goddess especially dwelt. The Samura tree is explained by a scholion to Ibn Hisham (p. 145) to be a palm tree.3 The reliability of these statements has been unjustly suspected by Wellhausen and Robertson Smith. The story of the birth of Jesus, as told in the Coran, vouches for the ancient sacredness, of the palm. Accordinging to the statement of Mohammed, which probably comes from Arabian Christians, Mary retired to a palm tree (Sura, 19:23) as the time of her delivery drew near, and was miraculously nourished by dates produced out of season (19:25). Such a statement reveals the conception that the palm tree was closely related to the divine. All these references coincide with a number of facts from other parts of the Semitic world which indicate that the date palm was sacred, and thus receive a confirmation which establishes a strong presumption of their truth.
In Abyssinia as in Egypt the sycamore was a sacred tree, and in some instances still maintains this character.4
The terebinth was a sacred tree in Palestine. It plays a prominent part in the traditions concerning Abraham (Gen. 13:18, 14:13, 18:1), Gideon received a message from an angel under one (Jud. 6:11), and in the days of Hosea incense was burned under terebinths (Hos. 4:13). There are traces also that the date palm was a sacred tree in Israel. Deborah is said to have sat under a palm tree, and is called a prophetess (Jud. 4:5), the inference being that the palm
1	Cf. Annales quos scripsit at-Tabari, vanM. J. de Goeje, Leyden, 1879-1897, 1,922, and Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sassniden aus der arabisch Chronik des Tabari, von Th. Noldeke, Leyden, 1879, p. 181. Smith (op. cit., p. 185) holds that the statement is incredible because it rests on the authority of a liar; but liars sometimes tell the truth.
2	Cf. Hebraica, X, 58-66.
3	Wellhausen’s Reste arabische Heidentums, 2d ed., p. 38. Wellhausen suspected this statement, because the vale of Nakhla (Palms) was so near. That, however, does not prove the statement wrong.
4	Cf. Bent’s Sacred City of the Ethiopians, p. 210.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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was sacred, and that it helped her inspiration to be near it. Some scholars endeavor to identify this with the terebinth of Gen. 35:8, but without sufficient ground.1 There is reason, as will appear below, to believe that the tree of knowledge in Gen. 3 was a date palm. Evidence of this also comes to us from the Jewish book of Enoch. In the oldest portion of the Ethiopic Enoch we are told (ch. 24) how Enoch visited paradise, and found that the tree of life was a date palm.2 The full significance of this statement will appear at a later point; it is enough to note at present that it affords evidence that the date palm as a sacred tree played a very important role in the thought of ancient Israel. Other evidence of this is not wanting. The story of Judah and Tamar (Gen. 38) indicates, since Tamar means palm, that a clan was incorporated into the tribe of Judah, which considered itself closely connected with the palm, and therefore regarded it as a sacred tree. Further, on the confines of Judah and Benjamin, there was a place, Baal-Tamar, which took its name from a god who must have been called “lord of the palm” (Jud. 20:33). Earlier it seems to have been called Baalat-Tamar, or “lady of the palm.” In all probability the name was derived from an early connection of a deity with a sacred tree.
At Elim, one of the stations at which the Israelites are said to have stopped on the way out of Egypt, the palm had a sacred significance, since it is connected with the sacred number seventy and with twelve sacred wells (Ex. 15:27). Jericho, too, was called the “city of palm trees” (Deut. 34:3, Jud. 1:16, 3:13), and it is probable that there in early times the palm had a sacred significance. The fact that the palm tree and cherub formed part of the adornment of the interior of the temple of Ezekiel (Ex. 41:18) and of the temple of Solomon affords further proof of the same thing. We cannot doubt, therefore, that the palm was a sacred tree among the Hebrews or their immediate ancestors.
When we approach the study of individual deities, it appears that there is no deity either in Egypt or in Semitic territory that can be
1So Moore, Judges in Inter. Crit. Comm., p. 113, and Budde, Richter, in Marti’s Kurzer Hand Commentar, p. 35. On the other hand, cf. H. P. Smiths Samuel in Inter. Crit. Comm., p. 67.
2 Cf. Charles’s The Book of Enoch, 1893. Charles rightly dates this portion of the book before 170 B.C.132
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shown to have been worshipped from the time before the Semites separated from the Hamites. Our one source of information for ancient Hamitic heathenism is the literature and art of Egypt. In all other Hamitic countries, either the influence of Islam or of Kushite or Negroid tribes have so overlaid the conceptions of that far-off time that they cannot with certainty be identified. If we center our attention upon Egypt, we find it difficult to prove that any deity described in the literature is really primitive. The Egyptians were not possessed of philosophic power. During the long centuries of Egyptian history and prehistory, many waves of thought swept over the minds of the people. At one time the gods were chthonic and animal in form; at another they assumed human shape but retained the heads of animals; at another, they were identified with celestial objects. All these conceptions are registered in the religious literature, not in coordinate fashion, so as to afford a consistent picture, or even to mark an orderly line of development, but they are thrown together so miscellaneously, that it has been asserted that we can gain no certain knowledge of the beginnings of Egyptian gods; that any theory of their origin is obtained only at the cost of ignoring the statements in religious texts which contradict it.1 Extreme as this statement is, it appears to be literally true.
Another difficulty arises from the preoccupation of the Egyptian mind with the life beyond. The great body of the literature is intent, not upon describing the gods, or ascribing to them honor, but in outlining the fortunes of the soul after this life has ended. Such literature reveals to us only incidentally the nature of the deities. For these reasons it is impossible to discover in the whole field of our study any deity that has certainly survived from the time when Hamites and Semites were still one people.
Notwithstanding this, there is a group of deities common to Egypt and the Semitic countries. They are vegetation gods and were developed out of that primitive tree-worship which has already been shown to have existed both in the Semitic area and in ancient Egypt. It is, however, generally agreed that the Egyptian members of this group originated in Semitic territory and were carried to Egypt by one of those prehistoric waves of Semitic immigration,
1 Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 4 f.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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to which attention was called above in Chapter III. These deities were in Egypt called Isis and Osiris, and were in many ways the most popular of all Egyptian gods. There is evidence, though, that at Abydos, where they were worshipped, they were not the primitive deities, but that they crowded out earlier gods. The evidence that they were Semitic is thoroughly convincing. Both the deities and the name, therefore, originated in Semitic territory (Arabia) and were carried from that central Semitic territory to adjacent countries in prehistoric time.
The view that I formerly entertained, that the ’asherah was originally a wooden post which marked the limits of the Semitic sanctuary and later became a goddess,1 needs, I am now convinced, modification. A more probable theory is, I now believe, that the term, which was some form of the Arabic 9athr (perhaps 'athir, ‘exquisite/ ‘excellent’ ‘friend’) was an epithet applied to the palm-tree goddess of Arabia, and that she was worshipped originally in palm groves. As Semites migrated and worship came to be offered where there were no such trees, or where the trees died when planted, the ’ashera by degrees became a post, which might mark the limits of the sanctuary,2 or be placed before the sanctuary.3 The number of asheras in tree-form found in Cyprus by Max Ohnefalsch-Richter4 favor the theory of such a development. Meantime the name also survived as the name of a deity. This deity was sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine. The gender in each community was probably determined by something either in the antecedents or the social organization of that community, but we cannot now always discover what these factors were. Thus in Babylonia in the time of Gudea, about 2400 B.C., Asharu5 was a god—a god of the harvest,
1	Cf. the article “Ashera” in the Jewish Encyclopedia.
2	This is an inference from the fact that in the Phoenician inscription from Ma‘sub ,asherah) like its philological equivalent ashirtu, ashrati or eshritu, eshrati in Assyrian and Akkadian is employed to designate ‘sanctuary.’
3	Cf. the many representations of Phoenician sanctuaries in CIS, I, and the two posts before the early sanctuary at Telloh in Découvertes en Chaldee no. 1. Cf. the writer’s translation of the inscription accompanying the last mentioned in JAOS, vol. XLII, 338-342.
4	See his Kypros, London, 1898.
5	See the writer’s Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, New Haven, 1929, pp. 238, 239134
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perhaps another name for Ningirsu.1 Similarly in Assyria, Ashur was a god, who gave his name first to the city Ashur and then to the country of the same name. Among the Amorites of the region of the Lebanon Mountains and also in Northern Phoenicia2 Asherat was in the fourteenth century B.C. a goddess,3 as she was among the early Hebrews under the name Asherah (Jud.3: 7; 1 Kgs. 18:19; 2 Kgs. 23:4). Similarly in South Arabia the name of the post became among the Vatabanians a goddess, Athirat,4 who in time seems to have been identified with the sun; at least, she takes the place of the Minaean and Sabaean sun-goddess in Vatabanian triads.5 *
It has long been the opinion of Breasted and other Egyptologists that the cult of Isis and Osiris was of Semitic origin. Although the present writer was, for a long time, not convinced of the correctness of this view,6 he now believes it to be established. The proof consists of four considerations. 1. At This, Osiris displaced the worship of an earlier deity; at Busiris, among Delta nomes of later origin, he appears as the original deity, but not, like native Egyptian gods, associated with an animal. In the neighboring nome of Cabasma, where Isis was the chief deity, there was also no sacred animal. At Siut, where for a time he was worshipped,7 he gained no permanent foothold. 2. The character and relation of Isis and Osiris are practically identical with the character and relation of Ishtar and Tam-muz. Both pairs were vegetation deities; both were regarded often as husband and wife, though sometimes thought of as brother and sister or mother and son. Both, too, were at times associated with fertiliz-
1	This follows from the fact that in the passage in question (Gudea, Cyl. B) the context is concerned with the induction of Ningirsu and Bau into the new temple which Gudea has built. In col. iii, 9, Ningirsu is said to come from Eridu; in iv, 1, Asharu is carried into the temple; while in v, 1, Ningirsu is carried into the temple. Either the Semitic Asharu is here identified with Ningirsu, or he has become a forerunner of Ningirsu who prepares the way for him.
2	Cf. e.g., JAOS, LII, 221-231; and the writer’s Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 534-537.
3	Cf. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln, 84.
4	Cf. Hommel, Aufsdtze und Abhandlungen, II, 211 ff., and D. Nielsen, Handbuch der altarabischen Altertumskunde, Kopenhagen, 1927, 188 and 226. Cf. also Rhodo-kanakis, Katabanische Texte, I (1919), pp. 58 and 122.
6 Cf. Nielsen, op. cit., 226 and 233.
6	See JAOS, XXXV, 213-223.
7	This appears from Sethe, Pyramidentexte, Sp. 366, 630; Cf. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, p. 39.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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ing waters.1 3. The name Osiris (in Egyptian j?sr), of which Isis (in Egyptian j?s-t) is but the feminine form,2 is composed of the same radicals as the names of the Semitic deities derived from the tree or post. This stem affords a satisfactory etymology of these names such as no Hamitic root affords, and accords with the large Semitic element in the vocabulary of the Egyptians demonstrated by Erman,3 Ember,4 and Albright.5 4. The symbol of Osiris at Dedu (Busiris) was a post,6 and the picture of this symbol became the hieroglyph7 of this god.8 These considerations make the theory of a Semitic origin of Isis and Osiris irresistible. It will appear, as our discussion proceeds, that the Semitic deities whose names were expressed by the root ’TR (’SR), which were sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine, were originally deities of fertility, differing in no fundamental way from those whose names were derived from the root *TTR 'STR). The fact that the names of Isis and Osiris are etymologically connected with a different root from that of the names Ishtar, Astarte, etc., is no argument against the view advocated here. The one unique phenomenon presented by the Egyptian members of the group is that a masculine and feminine pair, bearing names of identical origin, are associated together as consorts. This is a survival in Egypt of a condition which may well have existed in Semitic territory in ages earlier than those from which the documents bearing these Semitic divine names come. While Asharu and Ashur, the earliest of the Semitic divine names, cannot as yet be traced earlier than about 2400 B.C., Osiris and Isis must have been carried to Egypt by a wave of Semitic migration 1500 or 2000 years earlier than that time.
1	For Egypt, cf. Breasted, op. cit., p. 20; for the Asiatic material, below, p. 137f.
2	The liquid r has fallen out before the dental t, the feminine ending, perhaps having first been assimilated to it, as the liquids n and l are frequently assimilated.
3	Cf. Erman, ZDMG, XLVI, (1892), 93-126, and Zeitschriftf. Aegyptische Sprache, v. 14, p. 8.
4	Zeitschrift f. Aegyptische Sprache, v. 49 (1911) p. 87; v. 50, p. 86; v. 51, p. 110; v. 53, p. 84.
5	Ibid.
6	Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion, London, 1907, p. 16.
7	Cf. e.g., Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, Sign-List, R 11.
8	The dd-post was also connected with Set: cf. Sethe, Urgeschichte, 81 and T. J. C. Baly, Jour, of Egyptian Arch., XVII, 266. That connection had probably been made before the introduction of Osiris into Egypt. The transfer of the symbol to Osiris was natural, both on account of the nature of Osiris and of his greater popularity in Egypt as time elapsed.136
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Another divine name which originated in the Semitic cradle-land in prehistoric time was the name Ashtar or Athtar. If Arabic preserves the forms of primitive Semitic speech better than the other Semitic dialects, its primitive form was probably Athtar. This name was applied to the same type of deity of fertility, water, and vegetation to which the name Athr or Athir (Asherat, Ashur, Osiris) had also been applied. In the historic period these deities were sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine, as were the deities which bore the other designation, though there is some reason to think that the feminine form of all these deities of fertility is older than the masculine form. It would appear that the designation Athtar for this type of deity arose later than the designation Athir or Athr, for while the latter name was, as has just been shown, introduced into Egypt long before the dawn of history, the former appears in Egyptian texts first in the Empire period after Egyptian conquests of Semitic territory in Asia. Though Athtar seems to have originated later than Athir, its origin dates from a time earlier than the dispersion of the Semitic peoples to their various national homes. It is the one divine name that is fondly employed by every Semitic people. It appears to have been carried into Babylonia in prehistoric time by Akkadians, among whom Ashtar (or Ashdar) was a goddess. Her name appears as a component part of the names of two early kings of Kish, Ashdar-muti1 and Enbi-Ashdar.2 Under the influence of the peculiar phonetic tendencies which prevailed in Babylonia, the name soon became corrupted to Ishtar, in which form it was the designation of the most widely worshipped goddess of the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians to the latest times. In South Arabia Athtar3 was a masculine deity, as was Astar4 in Abyssinia, and Ashtar, in northern Phoenicia5 and was fused with Chemosh in
1	Cf. The Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, pp. 352, 353.
2	Ibid., pp. 6 and 7.
3	Numerous inscriptions attest the fact; see e.g., CIS, Pt. IV, Tome I, no. 47, where Athtar is called “lord of the water-supply.” Nielsen, op. cit.y 228 ££., says that Athtar was a masculine Venus. Doubtless this is true for the period from which the inscriptions come, just as in Babylonia Ishtar was in the historical period identified with that planet, but in neither case can the stellar character have belonged to the deity in the earliest times. All gods of fertility, we are convinced, were originally chthonic.
4	See D. H. Müller, Epigraphische Denkmälern aus Abessinien, Wien, 1894, pp. 37,38.
5	In the Ras Shamra texts; cf., e.g., JAOS, LII, 221-231; and the writer's Archeology and the Bible, 6th ed. p. 534 ff.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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ancient Moab.1 Among the Aramaeans her name appears as Atar,2 (the th being assimilated to the t and the doubling weakened), where, as in Babylonia, without the addition of the feminine ending it designated a goddess. Among the Phoenicians the feminine ending was added, making the name Ashtart3 (which the Greeks took over as Astarte), while Hebrew writers distorted it to Ashtoreth4—a form familiar to all readers of the Old Testament. The prehistoric origin of the name is attested by its wide use in every part of the Semitic world, and its widespread survival is evidence that it was a word which designated some function of the deity of fertility widely recognized by the Semitic people as fundamental to her nature and closely bound up with their economic life.
It seems unnecessary here to recall the various etymologies of this divine name that have been proposed. The writer has several times published discussions of the subject in which these are recounted.5 The etymology proposed by him in Semitic Origins thirty years ago, by which the name is regarded as a reflexive of the root 'tr, metathesis having taken place between the inserted t and the second radical, as occurs also in some other Semitic words,6 has been accepted by Paton,7 and seems to be well established. According to this view the name originally designated ‘The self-waterer’ and was applied to the spirit of a spring which irrigated and rendered fertile the adjacent land—a most appropriate name for the goddess of an Arabian oasis. Such a deity might also be appropriately called Athir, ‘Excellent One/ ‘Friend/
1	Cf. Smend and Socin, Die Inschrift Mesa von Moab, Freiburg, 1886, 1.17, or G. A. Cooke, North Semitic Inscriptions, Oxford, 1903, p. 1 if., or Lidzbarski, Nordsemitische Epigraphik, Weimar, 1898, Taf el I. A translation is also found in the writer’s Archeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1933 (6th ed.), p. 459 f.
2	Our oldest mention of the goddess, except in proper names, occurs in the inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, who came in contact with her worshippers in his Arabian campaign; cf. V R, pp. 8, 11. 112, 124.
3	See e.g., CIS, Pt. I, no. 1.
4	See e.g., 2 Kgs. 23:13.
8 Cf. Hebraica, X (1893), pp. 69, 71; Semitic Origins, 1902, pp. 102-104; and JAOS, XXXI, pp. 335-339.
6	Cf. the Assyrian kustaru, ‘tent;’ the Hebrew, sentereth, ‘tube’ (Zech. 4: 12; the Ethiopic khartama, ‘to be unfortunate’ or ‘wretched,’ kuestara, ‘to cleanse’ or ‘scour,’ gafteve, ‘to turn about,’ and kantasa, ‘to pluck’ or ‘gather.’
7	See the article “Ashtart (Ashtorath), Astarte” in Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.138
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In an Arabian oasis the most important product of fertility is to this day the palm tree. The economic importance of this tree has been fully set forth in Chapter IV. In the earliest times, before the discovery of the cultivation of grain, the economic importance of the palm must have been relatively even greater than it is today. As the tree grew by the never-failing spring, it was inevitable that the spirit of the tree and the spirit of the spring should be associated in the popular mind, and the relationship between the two interpreted in terms of human relationship. Thus the tree was regarded as the son, or brother, or husband of the spring as different myths to explain the relationship were developed in different localities or in different ages. It thus happened that the date palm—the most widely useful of all the trees of North Africa and Arabia—became also the most widespread symbol of divinity. Its survival as the home of a god in Egypt is evidence that the conditions we have made probable for Arabia also prevailed in the oases of the Hamitic cradle-land; in the Semitic world its survival as a sacred tree, together with the survival of its stump as a sacred post, which even invaded Egypt as the symbol of Osiris, attests the palm as the tree which had been, in the minds of early Semites, most widely reverenced as a god.
The evidence adduced above, from which it appears that the epithet from which Osiris, Ashur, Ashirta, Athirat, and Ashera sprang is older than that from which Athtar, Ishtar, and the kindred names arose, make it probable that the first group of names originated when the date palm was to the Semites still a wild tree, the fruit of which they had learned to prize, and so called the palm-tree spirit Triend/ while the latter group of names originated after it had been learned how to increase the date supply by cultivation. The term ‘self-waterer’ is analogous to the term ba'al, which, as the late W. Robertson Smith demonstrated,1 designated land that needed no irrigation, and a number of words derived from its root are still applied to processes of palm-tree culture. Thus *athur means “a channel that is dug for the purpose of irrigating a palm tree such as is called ba'al”\ 'athr, “such as is watered by rain alone;” and *athri, “dust,” “earth,” or “mud.”2 It thus seems probable that all these divine names are derived from terms which at different
1	The Religion of the Semites, p. 97 ff.
2	E. W. Lane, Arabic Lexicon, p. 1953.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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stages of civilization were applied by the ancient Semites to deities connected with the palm tree and its culture.
As Arabia and North Africa became more and more desiccated, the life of these ancient tribes centered more and more in the oases. The Bedu, coming in from the arid desert to a green and fruitful oasis would naturally say the “friend,” or “the self-irrigating (or fruit-producing) goddess has her abode here.” That oasis thus became to him a garden of his god; its waters and trees, visible representatives of his deities.
When Semitic Origins was written, the writer believed that the earliest form of Semitic society was matriarchal, and that that social organization so moulded religious conceptions that the mother goddess was, in the earliest religion, supreme. In the lapse of time facts then unknown have come to light which now lead him to think another view more probable. Briefly, these facts are as follows:
There are three passages in Babylonian literature which show that water was regarded as the spermatozoa1 of the gods, and that the rise of the water in the two great rivers which irrigate that country was thought to be due to sexual union between a god and an earth goddess. In one case it was Enlil and Ninlil;2 in another, Enki and Nintu(d);3 and in the third case Ningirsu and Bau.4 In these cases the mother goddess represents the all-producing earth, which is made fertile by the waters which are thought of as poured forth by the god as spermatozoa is discharged by the husband in marital union. The whole conception is so naive that it surely must have survived from the earliest times. In this Babylonian conception the water is regarded as a male principle. That the same was true in Arabia is indicated by the fact that in that country Athtar, the self-waterer, was a masculine deity. It is probable that in Arabia, as in Babylonia, the earth goddess was at that time thought of as a
1	This is why the sign “a,” which means ‘water’ in Babylonian, and was originally the picture of a river or canal, also means ‘father’ and ‘son;’ see the writer’s Origin and Development of Babylonian Writing, Leipzig, 1913, no. 521.
2	See the writer’s Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, New Haven, 1918, no. 4, p. 34 ff.
3	Cf. the writer’s Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 346, and for a translation of the passage, The American Journal of Theology, XXI, p. 581.
4	Cf. Gudea, Cyl. B, col. xvii, translated in the writer’s Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, p. 251 f.140
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mother, but her primitive name has not survived; we only know her under such epithets as Al-Lat, The goddess/ Al-Uzza, The mighty one/ etc. It should further be observed that it does not seem improbable that the idea that water is a male emanation may go back to the far-off time when the Kami tes and Semites were one people. In Egypt the Nile god, Hapi, was a male and a father-god.1 It has long been a perplexing fact that in the Egyptian religion Geb, the earth deity was masculine, while in all other known religions except that of the Maoris the earth deity is feminine. The facts recited above would seem to afford an explanation of this peculiarity of the Egyptian religion. As springs are situated in the earth and were, like the Nile, masculine, the sex of the thing contained was transferred to the container, and so by metonomy the earth became masculine.
At all events, water was masculine both in the thought of the Semites and in that of the Hamites, and accordingly, in the problem of origins, we must seek to explain how the name came to be applied at times to feminine deities. This does not mean that all the positions taken in Semitic Origins were mistaken, as there are still instances in which female deities were transformed into males.2 It does mean, however, that the problem of origins is much more complicated than the writer thought it to be thirty years ago.
From the facts as now known to us it would appear that in the primitive Semitic religion the spirit of the spring (the self-waterer) was male, the earth goddess was female, and vegetation spirits were regarded as their children. We cannot now determine whether 9tr or ’tir, (Asherah) was in the first instance applied to the earth or to the tree. We only know that in later time it was associated with the tree or post, and was sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine. In this respect it represented the bi-sexual nature of the palm tree.
Side by side with the facts just noted, which seem to justify the conclusion we have drawn, it must be remembered that among the North Semitic peoples, with the exception of Moab and, in the early time, northern Phoenicia, the deities which bore the
1	See Wiedemann’s Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 145-147.
2	Such were all those masculine Babylonian deities whose names begin with the word NIN, ‘lady,’ as e.g., Ningirsu.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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name of the ‘Self-waterer’ (Ishtar, Ashtart, Ashtoreth, Atar) were all feminine. In other words in practically all the North Semitic territory this name was applied to a feminine deity. It will be shown below (Chapter VII) that this differentiation in the sex of the type of deity to which this epithet was applied took place in South Arabia itself, so that it is probable that that region was the cradle-land of the Northern Semites as well as of the Southern. It is probable that among the North Semites the types of marriage known as beena and mot'a long prevailed. This organization of the family and the sib or clan possibly produced a type of society which preferred a goddess as the supreme deity. So, just as there had been a tendency in the primitive Semitic home to apply the term Athir (Asher, Ashera) indiscriminately to gods and goddesses, so the Northern Semites gradually applied to a goddess a term which had originally been coined for a masculine deity. This distinction was maintained through all later history. Among the Southern Semites, Athtar (Astar) was a god; among Northern Semites Ashdar (Ishtar, Ashtart, Atar) was a goddess.
While we cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, trace among the Hamites, except in the instance of the Isis-Osiris cult already cited (and this underwent great transformation in Egypt), the influence of the primitive conditions which appear to be well established for the Arabian desert, they left their mark in many ways on the later traditions of the Semites. One of the most noteworthy of these was the sacredness of the palm—the tree of life—and the conception of Paradise.
In the biblical picture of Paradise in the J document (Gen. 2: 4b—3: 24) a number of different elements are combined. First Yah-weh is said to have formed man from the dust of the earth as the goddess Aruru formed Enkidu in the Gilgamesh epic.1 After that he formed the animals, but finally as no animal proved to be a suitable companion for man, he formed woman. It is implied that before the creation of woman man had consorted with the animals as, in the Gilgamesh epic, Enkidu consorted with the animals.2 The
1	Cf. Jensen's translation in E. Schrader's Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, VI, 121, or the writer’s Archeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 312, or R. C. Thompson, The Gilga-mish Epic, London, 1928, p. 10.
2	Cf. E. Schrader, op. cit.,V1,121, or R. C. Thompson, The Gilgamish Epic, London, 1928, p. 11.142
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man and woman are then put in a garden at the mouth of the rivers, apparently in the general region of Ur and Eridu.1 In this garden there is a tree of knowledge, of the fruit of which they are forbidden to eat. Tempted by the serpent this primitive pair ate of this forbidden fruit and their eyes were opened and they perceived that they were naked. Before this, they had been nude in the presence of each other without shame. Clearly this tale was told to explain, among other things, how the knowledge of sex dawned, and it attributes that knowledge to the act of eating the fruit of a tree. From what we have learned of the palm tree, its general distribution, its difference of sex, and its economic importance to the Semites, the suggestion that the tree of knowledge was a palm tree lies close to our hand. This suggestion is confirmed by a picture on a Babylonian seal which represents the primitive man and woman sitting on either side of a palm tree, from which clusters of dates are hanging. Behind the woman a serpent stands erect on his tail apparently whispering in the woman’s ear.2 Critics have long recognized that in the original form of the story in Genesis there was but one tree—the tree of knowledge. As the text now stands there is introduced into the text (see Gen. 3: 22) a tree of life. This we take to be another interpretation of the meaning of the one tree—the original palm, which was, so far as this world was concerned, a real tree of life to the Semitic peoples. The J writer employs the term “life” here in a slightly different sense, to make the story account for the fact that man does not live forever, but in doing so he but
1	In the description of the situation of Paradise in Gen. 2:11-14, the names of the Tigris and Euphrates have been long recognized, but the names of the other two rivers have caused much speculation. It is probable that they are represented by the Wadys, Karun and Al-Batin, which lead into the Tigris-Euphrates valley near the point where at the dawn of history the rivers flowed into the Persian Gulf. At the dawn of history and in prehistoric time, these Wadys must have contained streams of considerable size; see C. L. Woolley, The Sumerians, New York, 1928, p. 2. The text of Gen. 2:10, “A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became four heads,” has sometimes been misunderstood by scholars, who have supposed that they must look for the location of Paradise at the source of the Tigris and Euphrates, and have accordingly sought for it in Armenia. The author was, however, describing the way that one who sailed out of Paradise would find the rivers dividing, and by the word “heads” he designated their sources. It is only so that rivers “divide.” They do not split up, as a rule, from a single river into many.
2	Cf. W. H. Ward, Seal Cylinders of Western Asia, Washington, 1908, no. 388, and Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Fig. 293.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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differentiates two aspects of the conceptions which his ancestors had entertained of this one important tree—the palm.1
This story came to the Hebrews from Babylonia. This is shown by the fact that he carefully places Paradise at the confluence of the rivers, as does the Gilgamesh epic,2 and by the fact that he calls Paradise a ‘garden’—a real Babylonian term. In view, however, of what we have learned of the conditions of early Semitic life, it is not hard to see back of this biblical narrative, with its Babylonian setting, an earlier story in which the primal man and woman are dwelling in an Arabian oasis and where, with the aid of the serpent, they gain from the example of the divine tree a knowledge of sex. To this ‘opening’ of their eyes the myth traced various elements of civilization, such as why men wear clothing; why man is compelled to till the earth to wrest a living from it; why pain accompanies childbirth; why men and women desire one another; why woman is subject to man (or once was); and why women dislike snakes.
As the story now stands, two originally independent strands have been woven together. In Chapter 2 and its Babylonian counterpart, woman is represented as enticing man from intercourse with the beasts; in Chapter 3 the serpent, a beast, is represented as urging the union of man and woman. The purpose of both representations was, however, to explain how men came to attain to a knowledge of sex and how homes and society were founded. The effect of tasting the divine fruit was that man was brought to a knowledge of ‘good and evil’, i.e., to the exercise of a virile manhood; he was led to adopt clothing, to till the soil, and to a knowledge of the various features of civilization. This view of the meaning of ‘good and evil’ is confirmed by the fact that in Deut. 1: 39, “having no knowledge of good and evil” is equivalent to not having attained the age of puberty.
But why should the tree appear in the story at all? Why should its fruit even symbolically represent the act of marital union? The answer is, I believe, to be found in the fact that the beginnings of
1	A passage in the Pyramid Texts already cited (§1216) presupposes such a paradise in Egyptian thought. This implies either that the conception of an oasis paradise with the palm as the tree of life is older than the separation of the Hamites and Semites, or that the conception was carried to Egypt with the Isis-Osiris cult.
2	Cf. Schrader, loc. cit. p. 245, and Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p.339, also R. Campbell Thompson, The Epic of Gilgamish, London, 1928, p. 53.144
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Semitic civilization were connected with the date palm, that a knowledge of the difference of sex in these trees was acquired at a very early time, and that the marvelous effect on the palms of the fertilization wrought by the wind appeared to the early Semitic mind as a divine exhibition of sexual fertilization and divine approval of it. Thus, the two would become associated in the Semitic mind, and in time the act would naturally be pictured as the fruit of the tree. That this view represents the truth is further indicated by the fact that in the biblical narrative cherubim are placed in the gate of the garden to prevent the return of man to his Eden of sexual unconsciousness. The cherubim were representations of the winds, which bore the fructifying pollen of the male flowers to the female, and the introduction of the cherubim at this point is the survival of an earlier feeling, that the constant enaction of this divine process of fertilization in the tree, which stood in the garden or oasis of his god and which sustained life, forced man onward by its divine example to similar acts with all their consequences. The ever-present cherubim of the palm kept alive, he thought, the sexual passion in himself which made abstinence and a return to what he regarded as primitive (i.e., a life in which woman played no part) impossible.1
As already noted, a comparison of Gen. 3:3,9 with Gen. 2:9 and 3:22 reveals the fact that in the original form of the story only one tree is mentioned. The Tree of life’ in the two last-mentioned verses is an addition.2 That such an addition should be made to the substructure we have supposed is shown to be very natural by the following facts. The idea of a future life played no important part in primitive Semitic thought. The life of the spirit after death was thought by the Babylonians3 and Hebrews4 to be a colorless
1	Thus an Arabic poet describes and addresses the palm:
“He lifts his beams in the sunbeam glance As the Almehs lift their arms in dance;
A slumbersome motion, a passionate sigh,
That works in the cells of the blood like wine.
O tree of love, by that love of thine Teach me how I shall soften mine/’
2	See K. Budde, Die biblische Urgeschichte, Giessen, 1883, p. 53 ff., and C. H. Toy, JBL, X, 12 ff.
3	See the poem “Ishtar’s Descent” of which there are many translations; e.g., one is contained in Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 529 ff.
4	For Hebrew thought cf. Isa. 14:9-11 and 38:18; Ps. 88:10 and 115:17; also Eze. 32: 22-30.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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and undesirable one, and to the Arabs of the desert the idea of an underworld seems to have been wholly lacking.1 The problem which interested them was the cause of present suffering, and not the problem of an immortal life. As the thirst for an immortal life arose, but before that life had been accepted as a fact, the story of the cause of human suffering would naturally be modified, to make it explain why man could not live forever. This is the form of it which lies before us in the book of Genesis. As time passed a provisional immortality of 500 years was accepted by some (Eth. Enoch, 10:10), and the tree of knowledge disappeared from Eden and the tree of life took its place (Eth. Enoch, 24, 25). Thus did Hebrew thought transfer the story from an explanation of toil to the promise of future reward.2 This transfer was easy; for, in another sense, the tree was to the primitive Semite always a tree of life as well as a tree of knowledge. The parallels which the Eabani story affords to the narrative of Genesis vouch for the Babylonian derivation of the latter. This is also shown in the fact that the garden is situated in the East (Gen. 2:8), and that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are mentioned in connection with it3 (Gen. 2:14,15).
There are in the Eabani episode, as has been already pointed out, features which were derived from the primitive conditions of Semitic social life. Although these features have been somewhat veiled in the biblical narrative, they are nevertheless present, and that narrative also contains another primitive feature which is still more promi-
1	Cf. C. Griineisen, Die Ahnenkultus und die Urreligion Israels, Halle, 1900, p. 33.
2	On the view presented in the text the historical origin of the Hebrew ideas of Eden and the heavenly paradise of New Jerusalem are as follows: The primitive conceptions of a sacred enclosure, where the god dwelt and the sacred tree was, grew out of an Arabian oasis, or possibly a North African, at a still earlier time (see below). This was transferred to Babylonia, where it became a garden. This conception was taken over by the Hebrews and is represented in Gen. 2 and 3. As time passed on and Jerusalem was destroyed and rebuilt, the Jewish ideal passed from a garden to a city. A garden may have been the home in the beginning, but a city became their ideal for the future. As Apocalypses were written and their authors sought for imagery under which to shadow forth their hopes of the heavenly future, they sometimes took the picture of Eden as did the author of Eth. Enoch, 24, 25; sometimes the city of Jerusalem, as did the author of Psal. Sol. 17; and sometimes the two were combined as in the Apocalypse of John, where it is a city with twelve gates (ch. 21), and yet it has a river with a tree of life, i.e., a garden (ch. 22:1, 2). Thus the imagery born in prehistoric times in the Arabian oasis with its palm tree appears, transformed and elevated it is true, but still appears on the last pages of the New Testament.
3	See Delitzsch’s Wo Lag das Parodies, Leipzig, 1881, and Haupt, in Ueber Land und Meer, 1894-95, No. 15.146
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
nent. The narrative in Gen. 3 represents God, man, and the serpent as forming one social circle. The serpent is wiser than man; he talks to the >voman, and his power of speech causes her no astonishment. These elements of the tale must have taken shape in a primitive society in which animals were really believed to possess such powers; i.e., it reflects the conditions of primitive Semitic, and not of Hebrew thought.
The fact that in Genesis Yahweh is represented as forbidding the acquisitions of the knowledge of good and evil on the part of man, has, I think, nothing to do with the primitive form of the story; it is but the local coloring given to the tale by the Yahwistic writer. This writer, in the stories of Cain and his descendants which follow, attributes the beginnings of civilization in every instance to those who disobeyed Yahweh. When he does so in the narrative of Eden, he is but following out his prevailing tendency. An opportunity was afforded him to thus interpret the tale by one of the features of the Babylonian story, preserved on a fragmentary tablet, which may form a part of the Gilgamesh epic. This represents Eabani as cursing Ukhat, who had promised to make him a god and who had instead brought him to death.1 This story probably reflects the evil effects of the unrestrained sexual practices of the Semites, as does also that passage in the sixth tablet of the epic where Ishtar’s love is represented as so terrible that she had smitten and crippled all her husbands. Such loose sexual habits as those traced above would necessarily produce venereal disease and death, and such dire effects might well be interpreted as evidence of the anger of the god. In the Eabani episode this view is, so far as we can tell, not taken. Eabani’s anger is directed against the woman alone; he does not seem to be conscious that he has angered a god. This latter inference, however, lay close at hand, and could hardly fail to be made by a writer whose attitude toward civilization was like that of the Yahwist. Side by side with the Babylonian view just described, and older than it, was another, which attributed civilization to the knowledge of sex and which regarded both as a blessing. Divine approval was manifested through the example of the
1 Cf. Haupt, Nimrodepos, pp. 16, 17, and B.A., Vol. I, pp. 318, 319; also Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 478, and AJSL.} Vol. XV, p. 209.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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sacred tree, which was the home of the divinity. It is thus only that we can account for the reference of civilization to sexual relations, for the sacred character attached to those relations among the Semites, and for the connection of both with the sacred tree.1
Our view of the original form of Ishtar is confirmed since in the palm tree, which grows by every Arabian spring, and which has grown there since man inhabitated Arabia,2 we find that the Semite saw the embodiment of all those features of vegetable and animal fertility which characterize this primitive Semitic cult, and which found such expression at a later time in its religious practices and in its mythology.
Since we are led by such reasons to these conclusions, it seems most natural to find in the rite of circumcision, which has survived among the Arabs, Abyssinians, Syrians, Phoenicians, and Hebrews, a confirmation of them, and in them an explanation of Semitic circumcision. Circumcision has been found among many peoples of the world, and is usually explained like tattooing, cutting off a finger joint, and other mutilations, as embracing the twofold idea of offering a sacrifice to the god and furnishing a tribal mark by which the god may easily know his followers, and they may be known to each other. That it had this latter force among the Semites is attested by its history among the Hebrews. The Yahwistic writer represents Yahweh (Ex. 4:24, 25) as trying to kill Moses or his son as though he were of a foreign stock, until Gershom was circumcised, when Yahweh desisted; while the priestly writer regarded circumcision as the sign of Yahweh’s covenant with his people (Gen. 17:10-12, Ex. 12:48). Such passages attest the religious importance of the rite among the Israelites, and the struggle which St. Paul and the early Christians who thought like him were compelled to undertake to gain emancipation is sufficient, to mention no other evidence, to show the importance attached to it by the Jews as the visible
1	The Biblical writer is in this representation also paralleled by another Babylonian tale, the Adapa myth (cf. KB., Vol. VI, pp. 92-101). This myth represents the god Ea as preventing by a deception the eating of the bread and water of life (i.e., the gaining of immortality) by a mortal. Cf. Gunkel, Schoffling und Chaos, p. 148 ff., and Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 549 ff.
2	See Theobald Fischer in Petermann’s Mittheilungen, Erganzunungsband XIV, No. 64, p. 11, and above, Chapter IV, p. 115.148
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
sign to their god and to one another of their fidelity.1 Herodotus mentions the Syrians and Phoenicians among those who practise circumcision,2 but of the details of its practice among them we know nothing. Of its practice among the ancient Arabs we have fuller information. It is mentioned by Josephus and Sozomen as a practice of the northern Arabs, and by Philostorgius as a practice of the Sabaeans.3 Sharastani mentions it as one of the practices which Islam confirmed as a religious duty.4 5 The way in which it is observed in Arabia at the present time attests the truth of this statement. Among the Bedawi it is the occasion of a feast at which the rite is performed on children of three full years. There is dancing on the part of the maidens, while the young men stand about and select from the dancing throng their wives. A sheep is sacrificed, its flesh cooked and eaten near sundown at a feast, while the entrails are left hanging on a trophy bush, or sacred tree. After the feast the dancing begins again and continues into the evening.6 Among other Arabs it is the custom to make the child ride on the back of the sacrificial sheep.6 At Mecca there still exists a similar custom of performing circumcision in connection with a sacrificial feast.7 Here the operation is performed from the third to the seventh year, and is performed on female children as well as upon male.
The circumstances under which it is performed in Arabia point to the origin of circumcision as a sacrifice to the deity of fertility, by which the child was placed under her protection and its repro-
1	For a concise sketch of the history of the rite in Israel see the article “circumcision” by Macalister in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, or by Benzinger in the Encyclopedia Biblica. For the Abyssinian custom, cf. Wylde’s Modern Abyssinia, p. 161. Circumcision is still practised by Abyssinian Christians in Jerusalem, cf. Goodrich-Freer, Inner Jerusalem, p. 121.
2	Bk. II, ch. 104.
3	Josephus, Ant. I, 122; Sozomen, H.E., VI, 38; Philostorgius, H.E., III, 4. Cf. also Nowack’s Archxologie, Vol. I, p. 167.
4	See Haarbriicker’s translation of Sharastani, Vol. II, p. 354.
5	Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, I, 340, 341.
6	Doughty, op. cit., I, 391.
7	See Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka, II, 141-143. Among the Hamitic Somalis of East Africa, who are deeply penetrated with Arabic influence, boys are circumcised at seven years of age, and girls are infibulated at ten. The hair is cut short at the same time, so that a long-haired person and an uncircumcised are identical. Cf. Reinisch, Somali-Sprache, pp. 110, 111, etc.; Bd. I of his Sudarabische Expedition. Wien, 1900.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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ductive powers consecrated to her service. The slaughter of the sheep was originally not simply for domestic purposes, since all slaughter of domestic animals was sacrificial.1 The consecration of the child by such an offering, in addition to the regular sacrificial victim, is parallel to the sacrifice of chastity by which women consecrated their wombs to the goddess of childbearing at Babylonia and Byblos.2 In the dance and the selection of future wives by the young Arabs in the Bedawi ritual we see a survival in a purified form of an old love feast, such as must have accompanied in one form or another all the feasts of the Semitic mother goddess, and to which Augustine and Ephraem bear witness.3 Originally circumcision seems to have been a preparation for connubium.4 Its transfer to infancy may, as W. R. Smith suggests,5 have been a later development. Circumcision thus receives for the Semitic peoples a fitting explanation, and an explanation not out of harmony with that usually given it by modern scholars for other peoples.
Circumcision was also practised by the Egyptians at a very early date,6 who performed the rite on youths of marriageable age.7 and Herodotus was so impressed by their practice of it that he claims that others learned it from them.8 According to Strabo they, like the modern Meccans, circumcised both men and women.9 The Gallas, another Hamitic tribe, also practise it.10 It would thus seem that the rite had its origin in the Hamito-Semitic cradle-land, while the two stocks were still one people.
In a system of religious thought, in which the sexual functions of the animal world found a counterpart and an apotheosis in the processes of the sacred tree, and in which free love was at certain times a religious duty, what more natural than that the organs of repro-
1	See Smith’s Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., pp. 234, 241, and 307.
2	Herodotus, I, 199, and Lucian’s De Syria Dea, 6. Cf. Hebraica, X, 21 and 31.
8	Cf. Ephraem, Opera, II, 458, 459; Augustine, De Civitate Deiy II, 4; also Hebraica,
X, 51, and 59.
4	Cf. Gen. 34, and also Ex. 4a5, where circumcision is connected with the idea of ‘bridegroom.’
5	Cf. Rel. of Sem.y 2 ed., p. 328; Wellhausen, Heidentum, 2 ed., p. 175.
6	Ebers, Aegypten und die Bücher Moses, I, 283.
7	See W. Max Müller, Egyptological Researches, Washington, 1906,1, PL 106.
8	Bk. II, 104.
9	Strabo, Bk. XVII. 25.
10	Macalister in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, I, 444.150
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
duction should be placed under the care of the tutelary divinity by such a sacrifice? Indeed, the Arabs of today, who are much with flocks and herds, declare that only in man is an impediment like the foreskin found, and they wonder how it is possible for reproduction to occur among uncircumcised Christians.1 Possibly their remote Semitic ancestors reasoned in the same way, and so conceived the necessity of making this sacrifice to the goddess of productivity, that they as well as other creatures might receive the blessing of fertility.
Trumbull has collected a convincing array of instances of the sacred character of the threshold among the Babylonians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs,2 which prove that the threshold among the Semites, as among people in many parts of the world, had the sanctity of an altar. The explanation which Trumbull offers for the sacredness of the threshold throughout the world is that primitive men everywhere make, by some common psychological process, a connection between the relation between the threshold and doorpost on the one hand, and the relation of the sexes on the other.3 The result of our investigation into Semitic religious origins confirms this conclusion in so far as it applied to the Semites. A people who, like them, attributed to the sexual relation the beginnings of intelligent life, the knowledge of clothing, agriculture, and the arts of civilization, and who, in their conceptions of divinity and in their religious rites, gave such prominence to sexual relations and functions, would most naturally invest the threshold, the approach to the tent or house where the fruits of these divinely ordained functions were sheltered, with something of the sanctity of the function itself. This would be especially easy for early man as soon as any structure beyond a mere tent formed his dwelling. The old Semitic door sockets and posts would by their very form readily suggest the organs of fertility. No doubt the nosb or masseba, which bore a general resemblance to a phallus, afterward became the symbol of Semitic deity for a similar reason.
Upright stone pillars, sometimes standing alone, sometimes arranged in circles of gilgals, and sometimes arranged so that two sup-
1	Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, I, 341 and 410.
2	The Threshold Covenant, Philadelphia, 1896, pp. 108-164.
3	Op. cit., pp. 193-203.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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port a horizontal stone, thus making a menhir, are found in Japan, India, Persia, the Caucasus, the Crimea, Bulgaria; also in Palestine, Tripoli, Tunis, Algeria, Morocco, Malta, Southern Italy, Sardinia, Corsica, the Belearic Isles, Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the German shores of the Baltic.1 As a rule these monuments are found not more than a hundred miles from the sea. Whether they were all erected by one race of men who migrated by sea, as has been supposed,2 or whether the custom was borrowed from people to people, we do not know. Where the custom of erecting such pillars first originated is equally veiled from us. Clearly such pillars were in Palestine before the coming of the Hebrews, who adopted them from their predecessors, but it is not so clear that they were in North Africa before the Hamites. The Egyptian obelisk was developed out of such pillars by a gradual process of elongation which may be traced in monuments which have survived.3 In Egypt the monuments seem to have been thought of in the historical period as phalli of the sun-god. Possibly the Hamites found them ready to their hand—survivals of the handiwork of an interglacial race of men. The Egyptian use of them indicates that the Hamites, like the Semites, regarded them as symbols of their deities of fertility, and gave them a place in the organization of the religious rites which constituted the worship of these gods.
In all Semitic life, religious and social, the hag or religious festival has always played an important part. Among the ancient Hebrews there were three such festivals which all readers of the Bible will readily recall—the Passover, near the vernal equinox, the feast of Weeks at the end of the harvest, seven weeks after the Passover, and the feast of Ingathering or Tabernacles at the time of the grape harvest in the seventh month. Of these, recent biblical scholars regard the first only as primitive, and hold that the others were agricultural festivals adopted by the Israelites after the settlement in
1	See the writer’s Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 147, for references to different sources of information.
2	See Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, Vol. V, Liverpool, 1913, pp. 112-128.
3	See Borchardt, Die Grabdenkmal des Königs Ne-user-re, 1907, and Breasted, History of Egypt, New York, 1909, p. 124, also the writer’s A Year’s Wandering in Bible Lands, p. 236. For the fully developed, elongated obelisk many other works might be cited. It is, however, doubtless familiar to every reader.152
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Canaan.1 There is much evidence, however, to show that two of these three festivals have their roots in primitive Semitic practices, and that what the settlement in Canaan did for them was not to originate them, but to give them a new interpretation. All scholars agree that the paschal portion of the Passover festival, as distinguished from the unleavened bread features of it, existed in the nomadic life of pre-Canaanitish days. This sacrifice of a sheep occurred in the month Nisan, i.e., in the spring, or at the beginning of the Oriental summer. Similarly in Cyprus, as we learn from Johannes Lydus,2 a sacrifice of a sheep was made to Ashtart. This occurred also in the spring, on the second of April. In Babylonia there was also a New Year’s festival, which was held in Nisan, which, at different times and in different places, was associated with different gods. When we can first trace it in the days of Gudea, it is the festival of Bau,3 one of the mother goddesses, into which a primitive mother goddess had developed in the peculiar Babylonian conditions.4 Later, in consequence of the forces which wrought the developments described below,5 it appears as a feast of Marduk of Babylon.6 In the earlier time when we can trace it as a festival of the goddess, the offerings were lambs, sheep, cattle, etc. Wellhausen, Robertson Smith, and Winckler have shown that in Arabia the festival in the month Ragab originally corresponded both in time and in character to these spring festivals among the other Semites.7 Two characteristics are common to all these festivals— they occurred in the springtime and they involved the sacrifice of lambs. In Arabia the domestic animals bring forth once a year,
1	Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, 5th ed., 1899, p. 91; Reste arab-ische Heideniums, 2d ed., p. 98; W. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, 2d ed., pp. 38,56, and 384, also Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 2d ed., pp. 240, 269; Harding in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, I, 860; and Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, p. 73.
2	Cf. his De Mensibus, Bk. IV, 45, and Hebraica, X, 45.
3	See KB., Vol. Ill, pp. 59, 61, 69, and 71; also Jastrow’s Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 59 and 677 ff.
4	See below, Chapter VIII.
5	Chapter VIII.
6	KB., Vol. Ill, p. 15, and Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 677.
7	Wellhausen, Reste arabische Heidentums, 2d ed., p. 97 if.: Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., p. 227 if.; and Winckler, Altorientalische Forschungen, 2te Reihe, Vol. II, pp. 324-350, especially p. 344. On the character of the offerings at the Ragab feast, cf. Smith, ibid., n.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
153
and the yeaning time is in the spring.1 In Ex. 34, the Yahwistic Decalogue, the earliest of existing Hebrew lawbooks, this spring festival is connected with the gift of firstlings to Yahweh (vv. 18-20). There can be little doubt, in view of these facts, that originally the nomadic Semites kept a spring festival to the mother goddess of fertility. The lambs, kids, and young camels were her gifts, and to her it was right that a joyous feast should be held in honor of her gracious blessings.
The circumcision festivals which were witnessed by Doughty occurred at the same time of the year.2 These feasts are still accompanied, as we noted above, by the sacrifice of a sheep, the dancing of girls, and the selection of wives. We cannot, therefore, be far wrong in regarding them as a survival of this old spring festival. As already pointed out, Ephraem and Augustine described the festival of the Semitic mother goddess, as it was known to them, as lewd.3 Originally, therefore, the spring festival was accompanied by the sacrifice of maiden virtue—a sacrifice out of which grew the custom described by Herodotus,4 as well as the sacrifice of the foreskin of youths. Probably acts of free love on the part of all were also a part of the primitive ritual.5
The spring festival in this far-off primeval time was then an occasion when the mother goddess was honored by sacrifices to her of some of all her many gifts of animal fertility in the ways which were thought to be pleasing to her. The time was appropriate, since she was revealing in the spring her power through the offspring of the flocks and herds, through the flowering date palms where her acts of fertilization were taking place, and through the nature which she had given men.
So the infant was consecrated to her service by circumcision, the maiden by the sacrifice of her chastity, and all by acts of free love. At the same time the bonds of tribal kinship were more closely knit by the commensal meal, which was no doubt accompanied by bois-
1	Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, I, 429.
2	Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, I, 340-342.
3	Ephraem, Opera, II, 458 if., and Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Bk. II, 4. Cf. Hebraica, X, 51 and 59.
4	Bk. I, 199. Cf. Hebraica, X, 20.
5	Such, as I take it, was the original meaning of the dance described by Doughty, ibid, p. 341.154
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
terous manifestations of joy, and by songs which would be extremely coarse when judged by the more refined standards of later ages.
Wellhausen has made it tolerably clear that in the pre-Islamic days the Arabs divided the year roughly into halves,1 and that the second half which originally began in the autumn was inaugurated by the Safar festival as the other half was by the Ragab festival. This feast he coordinates with the Hebrew feast of Tabernacles, which came in the month Tishri and which represented to the Palestinian Hebrews the conclusion of the grape gathering. Existence of pictorial evidence of this feast is found in Babylonia. Its celebration is actually pictured on a seal from Ur.2 The character of this feast among the primitive Semites it is not hard to guess. The harvest of the date palm comes at just this time,3 when the Arabs give themselves to gladness and hospitality,4 and the nomads visit the oases to lay in a supply of dates for the winter.5 We cannot doubt but that in ancient times such an occasion was made a festival to the goddess of the palm tree or that it was characterized by orgies such as would befit the rejoicings of a people possessing such a social organization and pervaded by such religious ideas. In the earliest times the oases were himas,6 or tracts sacred to the gods; the gathering of the dates took place therefore in a sacred tract as well as from a sacred tree and would accordingly be naturally regarded as a religious act. This autumn festival still survives in Abyssinia. It has been Christianized and is called Mascal, or the Cross. It is celebrated in September, and a part of its ritual includes the lighting of fires on high places before dawn, when oxen are slaughtered as in a heathen festival. It is celebrated, too, with dancing, drumming, and playing the sistra during the whole night.7 Considerable elements of heathenish rites have entered into all the
1	Reste arabische Heidentums, 2d ed., p. 96 £f. Cf. Winckler, Altorientalische For-schungen, 2te Reihe, Voi. II, p. 344, who makes the same division as Wellhausen, but makes it begin with Muharram, the month before Safar.
2	See Museum Journal, Sept.-Dee. 1929, p. 295, seal no. 80.
3	See Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, I, 557 and 561; also Zwemer’s Arabia, p. 125.
4	Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, II, 122.
5	Doughty, ibid., as n. 3.
6	Smith’s Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., pp. 112,142-144, and 156-157 ; Wellhausen, Heidentums, 2d ed., p. 105 ff.
7	See Bent’s Sacred City of the Ethiopians, pp. 53, 83, 84.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
155
phases of the ritual of the Abyssinian church, but it is not difficult to detect the source whence this feast has come.
Of a third festival we cannot be so confident. If it existed in primitive times, it must have been connected with the god Tammuz. Traces of a festival of the god Tammuz, preceded by wailing for him, are found in Babylonia, Palestine, and Phoenicia. It appears from the poem known as “Ishtar’s Descent/’ that there was in Babylonia a “day of Tammuz.’'1 It is usually held, since the fourth of the Babylonian months bore the name of this god, that it was then that his festival was celebrated, and Jastrow on this basis holds that it was a solar festival, celebrated in the fourth month at the approach of the summer solstice.2 He, like many others, connects this feast, which was preceded by wailing for the death of the god and celebrated by rejoicings at his resurrection,3 as significant of the annual death of vegetation, which on Jastrow’s interpretation would be due to the burning heat of the summer sun. It appears, however, that in Phoenicia and Palestine the festival was celebrated not in the fourth but in the sixth month. Ezekiel (ch. 81) dates it according to the Massoretic text at that time, though the LXX place it in the fifth month. Many modern scholars follow the LXX, but, as it seems to me, without sufficient reason.4 The cuneiform non-Semitic expression for the sixth month was the “month of the Mission of Ishtar,” as though it was then that she descended to the lower world.5 The name of the sixth month, Elul, has been explained from the wailing for Tammuz,5 and altogether it seems probable that the wailing originally occurred in the sixth month, and was followed by the festival of date harvest at the beginning of the seventh, of which we have already spoken. If this be the case, the sacrifice of chastity of which Lucian speaks in connection with these rites at Byblos was a survival from the rites of joy with which the date harvest was celebrated in primitive Semitic times. That the feast
1	Cf. IV R., p. 31, rev. 1.56; Eebraica, IX, 151; and Jeremias’s Leben nach dem Tode, p. 23.
2	Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 682.
3	Cf. Lucian, De Syria Dea, § 6; Hebraica, X, 31; and Pietschmann’s Geschichte der Phoenizier, p. 219.
4	Cf. Toy’s Ezekiel, in Haupt’s SBOT.
5	Cf. Muss-Arnolt in JBL., XL, 88, 89; and Brunnow’s Classified List of Cuneiform Ideographs, No. 10759.156
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of Tammuz should in some form go back to primitive Semitic conditions is indicated by the myth which makes Tammuz the son of Ishtar and which, as we have noted, could only have been formed in a society organized on the lines of the so-called matriarchal clan. Winckler’s conclusions as to the old Arabic calendar include the opinion that there was in Arabia a similar summer festival in July-August.1 The special characteristics of this festival are not clearly known. It seems likely, however, that it was a survival from the old wailing for the death of vegetation which preceded the glad festival of the date harvest. Primarily, then, this feast was a sort of Lent preceding the glad time of the autumn festival, when the tree of Tammuz and Ishtar yielded its fruit.
Following Robertson Smith,2 I expressed in the “Ishtar Cult” the opinion that the wailing for Tammuz was originally the wailing for a sacrificial victim.3 I still incline to think that this view is right, although, as then, I think that at a very early period it may have received a new explanation which connected it with the death of vegetation. In the deserts of Arabia when the burning summer sun dries up the pastures and in consequence the milk of the domestic animals largely fails, while the summer heat renders life almost unendurable,4 it may well have seemed to the nomads that Tammuz was dead. Thus the wailing which originally accompanied the death of the victim at the festival, was, I think, extended to cover a portion of time preceding harvest. This produced a period of gloom to be turned to life when harvest came with its evidences of the god’s returning life.
Robertson Smith has with great plausibility connected the fasting and humiliation of the Jewish Day of Atonement with this Tammuz wailing.5 Such connection is from every point of view exceedingly probable. The Day of Atonement came at the beginning of autumn, a fact which confirms our view that it originally occurred in connection with the autumn feast.6 If this view be correct, it is not
1	Altorientalische Forschungen, 2te Reihe, II, 336-344.
2	Religion of the Semites, 1st ed., p. 392, n.
3	Hebraica, X, 74.
4	Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, I, dis. xvii and xviii, esp. p. 472 ff.
5	Religion of the Semites, Lect. XI, esp. p. 411.
6	Frazer, Golden Bough, ch. iii, connects the death of Tammuz with the corn (wheat) harvest—the slaying of the divine grain. This cannot have been primitive, on accountRELIGIOUS ORIGINS
157
difficult to understand how the Tammuz wailing and ritual may have been transferred in Babylonia to the fourth month. The first harvest of wheat and barley is in that country reaped at the time of the summer solstice, and at such a time a festival among an agricultural people is a most natural occurrence. If in order to meet this need the Tammuz festival were put forward a few weeks, the influence of Babylonia on Palestine in the El-Amarna period would lead (if local influences had not already done so) to the establishment of a festival at the end of harvest there. This afterwards the Hebrews adopted as the feast of Weeks. Meantime the direct influence of Arabia seems to have been sufficient in Phoenicia and Palestine to keep the original Tammuz festival at its own period in the autumn separate from the festival at the end of the barley harvest. Something like this may have been the course of development in Babylonia. The fact that the fourth month bore the name of Tammuz is a somewhat slight basis for such conjecture, since the month may have been given the name for other reasons.
We conclude, however, that but two Semitic festivals were primitive, the festival of the yeaning time in the spring and the festival of the date harvest in the autumn. Out of these the other festivals of the Semitic world have been developed, except as some of them have been borrowed from the peoples of the lands in which they settled.
If now we turn to the Hamites, from whom originally the Semites separated themselves, we find some indications that their primitive institutions were similar to those of the primitive Semites, if not identical with them. Circumcision was, as we have already noticed,* 1 practised by the Egyptians and the Hamitic Gallas; and Nowack2 and Benzinger3 still hold with Herodotus that the Semitic rite was borrowed from Egypt. Down to the time of the Caesars women and girls were licensed to a life of immorality by consecration to the service of Amon at Thebes. These women were held in such high esteem that this public course of life did not prevent them from making good marriages when age compelled them to withdraw from this
of the economic conditions of Arabia, though possibly it was a later agricultural explanation.
1	See above, p. 149.
2	Archœologie I, 167.
3	Archœologie, p. 154.158
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service.1 Maspéro interprets this as a relic2 of polyandry.3 In its later stages this polyandry was endogamous, since it permitted the marriage of brother and sister, and sometimes of father and daughter. It has been thought that one of the legacies left to Egypt by this type of polyandry is the use of the words “brother” and “sister” in the sense of “lover” and “mistress.”4 This stage of the civilization is, he thought, further indicated by the fact that in the temples of the chief gods there were women devoted to purposes similar to those for which they were attached to the temple of Amon, while in the temples of the female divinities they held the chief places.5 The temple of Khnum, e.g., had a religious harem.6
It has, however, been pointed out in Chapter IV that we now interpret these facts differently. In the light of present knowledge they do not prove the existence of a polyandrie social organization.
We have, then, in the oldest Hamitic civilization traces of circumcision, of a mother goddess who represented well-watered land, as among the Semites. The date palm was also known, and there is at least one trace of it as a god.7 Its character was such that the tree played a part in the love poetry of later times.8
Among the Hamites who lived to the west of Egypt similar customs appear. Thus Herodotus tells us9 that the Nasamones, a tribe of Berber Hamites,10 made yearly expeditions to a date palm oasis to gather the fruit, and their sexual customs in general resembled closely much which we find among the Semites.
With reference to these institutions which the ancient Semites and Hamites had in common, there are three possible opinions: (1) They may have developed them in the early days before the two peoples separated, when as yet the races were one; (2) they may have developed them independently through the influence of similar
1 Strabo, Bk. XVII, 46.
2Cf. Petrie, Social Life in Ancient Egypt, pp. 67, 73, and 77.
3 Maspéro’s Dawn of Civilization, p. 50.
*Ibid., p. 51. See, however, above, Ch. IV, p. 108.
5	Ibid., p. 126.
6	E. Suys, VU de Petoseres, p. 81, Brussels 1927.
11bid., pp. 27 and 121, n. 1.
8	W. Max Müller, Liebpoesie der alten Ägypter, Leipzig, 1899, p. 17.
9	Book IV, 172.
10	Sergi, Mediterranean Race, p. 47.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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environments; or (3) one race may have borrowed from the other at a comparatively late period.
The last of these possibilities must be rejected at once. We have shown above how all these institutions of primitive Semitic life, including even circumcision, grew naturally out of the desert and oasis life such as they were subjected to in Arabia. It is purely arbitrary, therefore, to assume without positive proof that any one of these institutions was a late intruder into Semitic practice. The theory of Herodotus with reference to circumcision must therefore be abandoned. On the other hand, few will be found to maintain that it or any of the other institutions under discussion were borrowed by the Egyptians from the Semites. A people which reached such a high state of culture at such an early epoch is not likely to have borrowed a religious and social practice from so rude a people as the Semitic Arabs at a time when the two must have been separated by sea and desert.
Of the other two possibilities, the first is, under the circumstances, by far the most probable. While, of course, two peoples of kindred race may in similar environments have developed similar institutions independently of one another, it must be remembered that the environment of the Egyptians, from the time of their settlement in Egypt, was not similar to that of the Semites, or of a character to produce institutions similar to theirs. Egypt is not a land of oases, but a river-land similar to Mesopotamia. It was an agricultural country, rich and productive. As we shall show below, the civilization produced in such a land was not polyandrous. North Africa, outside of Egypt, was for the most part a barren country with occasional oases, in its general features not unlike Arabia.1 It is altogether probable that, as these regions filled up, conditions were produced by the crowded populations similar to those which we have proven for Arabia, and that in consequence a similar culture of the date palm, a similar organization of the clan, a similar worship for the feminine productive principle, and in general, similar institutions were in some portions produced, though the fertile valleys in some portions of North Africa probably prevented the production of these institutions on so wide and so uniform a scale as in Arabia.
1 For a description of North Africa and its oases, see the International Geography, ed. by Hugh Robert Mill, London, 1899; for Morocco, p. 905.160
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Now such crowding of the country must have occurred before the Semitic migration, and must have been its cause. Some such force must have impelled the first immigrants to enter the unattractive Arabian peninsula. We have, then, in the primitive Hamito-Semitic home the elements present for the birth of these institutions before the separation for the two grand divisions of the race. We hold it probable, therefore, that the totemistic clan, the culture of the date palm with its worship, the mother goddess as the typical divinity, and circumcision, had to some extent their beginnings at the time when the Hamites and Semites were living in that common house of their infancy, in which their kindred tongues were born, notwithstanding that the differences in those tongues bear witness to the fact that they separated in prehistoric time, thousands of years before.
It will be noted that in connection with the feasts as they survived among the different nations, there was a good deal of sexual laxity. When Semitic Origins was written, it was inferred that such laxity was a survival from a primitive polyandry. It will also be found that in the different agricultural communities of the Semites of later time qedeshoth or religious prostitutes were connected with temples, and in Babylonia, according to Herodotus,1 every women was expected once in her life to play the hierodule.2 In Egypt, too harems were connected with the temples in the historic period,3 and the writer once explained all these institutions as survivals of a polyandrous type of marriage of an earlier time. During the past fifteen years, however, evidence has come to light which has cpn-vinced him that another explanation is probably the true one. It has already been pointed out that among the Babylonians and probably also among the Hamito-Semites, water was regarded as the spermatazoa of the gods. In addition to this, it should be noted that among early peoples belief in sympathetic magic is practically universal. Further, among such people, the distinction between magic and religion is not sharply defined. In countries, accordingly, like Babylonia and Egypt, where fertility depended upon the rise
1	Bk. I, 199.
2	See also the writer’s article “Hierodule” in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
3	See below, Ch. VI, p. 196.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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of the rivers, or like Palestine, where it depended on the rainfall, the flow of fertilizing waters was naturally thought of as the result of a divine sexual act—the marital union of a god and a goddess. In that stage of thought it would be equally natural that they should think that their deities could be encouraged to such a union by human examples. It is probable that at the religious feasts it was the custom to indulge freely in such acts of union, in order to encourage their deities to do likewise, that the fertilizing waters might flow, the earth be fertilized, and fruits produced for the sustenance of mankind. From what we now know both of their social organization and conceptions as to these other matters, such a motive seems the real explanation of the origin of such institutions.
At this point an interesting question arises. If such was the origin of the customs in question, did they exist in the desert-oasis life of the Hamito-Semites, or are they a by-product of agricultural life? In the desert fertility was not dependent upon rainfall, since the fertilizing waters came from never-failing springs, and the rain which might fall upon rare occasions had probably to early men no conceivable connection with their crops. Another aspect of their economic life may, however, have afforded a motive for similar religious customs. Attention has been called to the importance of the date palm to the oasis-dwellers, to their knowledge of the bisexual character of the tree, and to the religious significance which they attached to it. It is quite possible that during the life of these early dwellers in the oases of Arabia and the Sahara it may have seemed to them just as important to induce their gods to join in that marital union which fertilized the date-palm and rendered it fruitful, as it later seemed to the inhabitants of rain-irrigated countries to induce them to pour forth upon the earth the fructifying waters. While the evidence has not survived to enable us to prove that this is so, we should be predisposed in view of all the conditions, economic and psychological, to postulate it. We therefore consider it probable that the beginning of such customs and of such institutions as the qedeshoth may be traced to the earliest times. f No doubt it will be distasteful to many to believe that the beginnings of Semitic religion as they were conceived by the Semites themselves go back to sexual relations. It must be remembered that such things were thought of and treated much more innocently in primitive162
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times than would be indicated by a similar treatment now. In reality, too, the Semite actually hit upon a feature of human life which is, as scientific investigation is showing us, intimately connected with religious feeling at the present day1 and has had more real influence in developing moral, altruistic, and humanitarian feeling in the past than any other. The prolongation of the period of helplessness in infancy and the consequent development of maternal love, out of which feelings of obligation and conscience have grown, is now seen to lie at the root of the moral and religious progress of the race.2 The primitive Semite’s conception of his goddess and her service, to which he attributed the beginnings of intelligence and civilization, was in a rude, blind way an emphasis of the same truth. Considering the animal passions of human nature, it is little wonder that the processes of procreation often attracted more attention than the offspring itself; but the delight which all Semites took, and still take, in their children, is witness to the fact that such religion was never wholly degenerate. Semitic sacrifice, in part commensal as Robertson Smith has shown it to be,3 embodies in a gross way the principle of the religious life which is expressed in the highest spiritual form in John 17:23: “I in thee and thou in me that they may be perfected into one”; so the Semitic conception of deity as we have traced it embodies the truth—grossly indeed, but nevertheless embodies it—that “God is love.”
This religion, containing a kernel of perpetual truth, although it was formulated thus crudely, formed the substratum of the religion of the Semites in historical times. It was modified here and there by economic changes and the consequent change in social conditions which followed. At other times foreign influences combined with these to effect a transformation. In Israel its baser elements were eliminated by the prophets, who erected on its foundation a structure of spiritual religion.4 Traces of these primitive conceptions
1	See Leuba in Journal of Psychology, 1896; Starbuck’s Psychology of Religion, New York, 1900, Part I on conversion; and Coe’s Spiritual Life, New York, 1900. The psychological aspects of this subject will be discussed in the light of the latest investigations in the writer’s Mysticism in the Religions of the World, which is in preparation.
2	See Drummond’s Ascent of Man, New York, 1895, chs. vii and viii and Fiske’s Through Nature to God, Boston 1899, pp. 96-130.
3	Religion of the Semites, Lectures VII to XI.
4	See below, Chapter X.RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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appear throughout the Semitic world as witnesses to the perpetual influence of these fundamental conceptions of religion and life; and owing to its influence through the Phoenicians upon the Greeks and through Greek society upon the early Christians, and also its influence on the Hebrews and through them upon the church, its effects in many ways abide to the present hour.VI
EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
IT HAS been indicated in preceding chapters how difficult it is to gain any clear idea of Egyptian origins. The great antiquity of the settlement of the Nile Valley, the evident mingling of races within it, the comparatively recent date from which the oldest Egyptian religious literature comes (in spite of its antiquity as compared with most other religious literatures), and the preoccupation of that literature with the fortunes of the soul after death, make it well-nigh impossible to draw aside the veil which hides from us the real origin of most Egyptian deities. Partly because of this and partly because the problems presented by the religious literature that has come to us are of such absorbing interest that the efforts of the students of the Egyptian religion have been devoted to their solution, it happens that little has been done to solve the ultimate problems of Egyptian religious origins. The works of Naville,1 Wiedemann,2 Erman,3 Petrie,4 and Steindorff5 are brief descriptions of the gods, their grouping and worship in the different historical periods, while the works of Budge6 and W. Max Müller7 are devoted to aspects of the mythology. In addition to these there are numerous monographs on special topics, such as the priests and temples of the Hellenistic period,8 and the worship of animals in the same period.9 Breasted has written a brilliant philosophy of the development of the religion in the historical period,10 but the only efforts made in recent years to penetrate the mysteries of prehistoric
1	The Old Egyptian Faith, London and New York, 1909.
2	Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, London and New York, 1897.
3	Handbuch der aegyptische Religion, 2te Auf. Berlin, 1909.
4	Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt, New York, 1898.
5	Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, New York and London, 1905.
6	The Gods of the Egyptians or Studies in Egyptian Mythology, Chicago, 1904.
7	Egyptian Mythology in Gray’s Mythology of all Races, Vol. XII, Boston, 1918.
8	See W. Otto, Priester und Tempel im hellenistiscen Ägypten, Leipzig und Berlin, 1905-1908.
9	See T. Hopfner, Der Tierkult der alten Ägypter nach den griechisch-römischen Berichten und den wichtigem Denkmälern, Wien, 1914.
10	The Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, New York, 1912.
164EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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origins which have come to the notice of the present writer are those of S.A.B. Mercer1 and Kurt Sethe.2 Of the work of Mercer it must be said that it is based on too meager a collection of facts to be convincing. Sethe’s book, on the other hand, is based on the fullest knowledge, and evinces on every page penetrating insight. Its one fault, in the opinion of the present writer, is that its author, in interpreting his facts, makes too little use of the findings of anthropological researches among other peoples.
It is perhaps rash for one to whom Egyptology is an avocation rather than a vocation to say anything about so difficult a series of problems, but it is the writer’s conviction that a clearer understanding of the probable course of development of the Egyptian religion and people may be obtained by comparing the phenomena presented in the Nile valley with facts from outside the field of technical Egyptology. If the present writer has any contribution, however small, to make to the subject, it is because for the greater part of a long life he has been a student of the beginnings of religious phenomena as they manifest themselves in a kindred field and has been led to interpret them by similar phenomena in other parts of the world. It cannot, however, be too strongly emphasized that in the end our results are tentative and hypothetical. The writer heartily adopts as his own the words with which Sethe prefaces his Urgeschichte* :
Dieses Bild .... durchaus hypothetischen Character hat. Es ist ein persönliches Vorstellungsbild, das sich selbstverständlich nicht beweisen, sondern nur wahrscheinlich oder wenigstens glaubhaft machen läszt. Wer es nicht glauben will, mag es nicht glauben.
In the historical period Egypt was divided into districts which were called sp.t. The Greeks called these vofioi—a word that has been Anglicized as ‘nomes.’ These nomes corresponded roughly to the shires or counties of England and Scotland. There were twenty-two of them in Upper Egypt, and twenty in the Delta. Each of these nomes had its special god, though in the historical period some of them had more than one; in most cases, too, each nome had its sacred animal. Each nome had also a capital city, though in some
1	S. A. B. Mercer, Études sur les origines de la religion de VEgypte, London, 1928; cf. Baly, Journal of Egyptian Archæology, XVII, 265 ff.
2	K. Sethe, Urgeschichte und älteste Religion der Ägypter, Leipzig, 1930.
3	Cf. op. eit., §3, at the end.166
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of the nomes different cities were, in the course of the history, accorded that honor. To one who approaches the study of Egyptian origins, it is tempting to assume that each of these forty-two districts, so many of which possessed a distinct totemistic symbol, must have been originally the home of a separate tribe. The problem is not, however, so simple as it at first appears. Four pairs of nomes (the thirteenth and fourteenth, twentieth and twenty-first in Upper Egypt; the fourth and fifth and eighteenth and nineteenth in Lower Egypt) bore the same names, the members of the pair being distinguished by the adjectives ‘North’ and ‘South.’ These pairs of names were analogous to North Carolina and South Carolina. Further the seventh and eighth nomes in Lower Egypt bore the same name, but were distinguished by the adjectives ‘East’ and ‘West,’ like the parts of various townships in the United States of America. If the theory that the nomes represent the habitats of originally different tribes has any validity, it would follow that these ten nomes represented originally the settlement of but five tribes and that they were afterwards divided. It seems to the writer that that is a tenable theory, but the divisions did not apparently occur from peaceable multiplication, but in most cases from the invasion of hostile tribes, sometimes of strange blood, for generally, though their names are kindred, their sacred animals are different.
Sethe is of the opinion that the division into nomes is not primitive. He holds that in Upper Egypt the primitive unit was the city; that the division into nomes was first applied to Lower Egypt and afterward extended to Upper Egypt.1 In his opinion the division of all Egypt into forty-two nomes was first made by Mena, the first king of United Egypt, who founded the city of Memphis.2 Sethe believes that Mena called this nome into existence as a separate entity. His reason for this is that the name of the nome was Inb-hd, or ‘White-wall,’ the name of the city of Memphis from the first to the sixth dynasty. It is, however, not impossible that the name of the new potentate’s important capital superseded an older name previously borne by this territory. However, as there is reason to to believe that important changes in the nomes occurred at a later
1	Op. cit.f pp. 6 ff. and 38 fF.
2	Ibid., p. 42.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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time, the opinion of so careful a specialist as Sethe should not be lightly set aside.
Sethe’s belief that nomes or their equivalent did not exist in Upper Egypt in the earliest times, but that the unit was the city,1 does not seem to the present writer in accordance with probability. In the far-off times of which we are speaking, the cities were but the fortified residences of tribes who subsisted by fishing, hunting, or agriculture, or by a combination of all three. Commercial cities, such as developed later, were unknown. A city presupposed a considerable territory which the tribe cultivated, and over which it hunted. If the term ‘nome’ had not been applied to the ethnic or septic divisions of Upper Egypt at this period, it is necessary to suppose that the tribal divisions of territory, which afterward constituted the nomes, existed, and that our best means of ascertaining what they were is through the religious and totemistic phenomena afterward embalmed in the organization of the religion of the different nomes.
The analysis of these phenomena is made difficult by the fact that in prehistoric time there was in some instances colonization of one nome or parts of it by people from another nome. Sethe has offered proof of instances of this,2 and additional instances will be pointed out below. This fact, while it increases our difficulties, does not make it impossible to discern with some degree of clearness the older strands in a mixed civilization.
Sethe has, with clear insight, discerned that the oldest gods represented in the writing were not living totemistic animals, but crude representations of idols in bird-form, crocodile-form, jackal-form, etc.3 He seems to infer from this that the religion represented by the fetish idol deities is older than the religion in which the god is pictured as a living bird. He confesses that the fetish of a bird-idol grew out of an older worship of a living bird, and herein sees a paradox. Nevertheless, because artistically it was easier to portray the idol in writing than the living bird, and because in Lower Egypt Horus is represented in the hieroglyphs by the drawing of an idol, while in Upper Egypt he is represented by the drawing of the living hawk, Sethe infers that the worship of Horus originated
1	Urgeschichte, §39.
2	Ibid. §§139-162.
*Ibid., §11.168
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in Lower Egypt and was later carried by colonizers to Upper Egypt. This reasoning may be correct, but to the present writer it seems to confuse the origin of a cult with the history of its portrayal in hieroglyphs. The facts cited may mean no more than that writing developed in Lower Egypt and was only introduced into Upper Egypt after some skill in its use had been acquired. Sethe himself confesses that the use of the fetish bird-idol presupposes the worship of the living creature—a fact that seems to argue for the greater antiquity of the horus or hawk cult in those parts of the land where the god was represented by the living bird. On this point the present writer feels compelled to part company with Sethe, and to hold that it is more probable that the Upper Egyptian nomes in which the hawk was regarded as the totem or sacred animal have not been shown to be emigrants from Lower Egypt, but are quite as likely to be independent settlements of Hamitic tribes from the regions to the west of the Nile. The present writer so regards them.
On another point he has reached different conclusions from those set forth by Sethe; that is, the etymology and meaning of the divine name Hathor. Sethe follows the etymology first suggested, I think, by Hommel, that	the Egyptian spelling of Hathor)
means ‘House of Horus’ in the sense of ‘Mother of Horus.’1 Two objections to this interpretation of the name seem to the present writer insuperable. ‘House’ does not mean ‘mother’ and the Egyptians had a good and common word for ‘mother.’ Further the element hr is not expressed by the picture of the falcon by which the god Horus is designated, but by the picture of a human face, by which the preposition ‘upon’ is most often expressed, and which in the Pyramid Texts, when followed by a head in profile, expressed ‘uppermost,’ ‘highest.’2 To me these facts indicate that the name Ht-hr.t meant ‘She of the lofty temple.’ It was an epithet applied, I believe, to goddesses of different origin after Egyptian civilization had so developed that temples of considerable size were constructed. It is a phrase analogous to ‘Sublime porte’ by which the government of the late Turkish empire was regularly called. Originally, I believe, it no more applied uniformly to one deity than the epithets ‘almighty’ or ‘king’ or ‘lady’ were restricted to one deity. So far
'Ibid., §67.
2 See Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, III, 140.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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from believing, therefore, that there was one Hathor worshipped in one center from which all other Hathors were derived, it is the presupposition of this work that, by the employment of an epithet derived from lofty temples of which the worshippers of the goddesses were proud, one name came in time to cover goddesses of diverse origin.
Sethe’s investigation is based on one assumption which the writer has long believed to be true, but which, so far as the writer knows, no Egyptologist had, until Sethe’s book appeared, advocated. That is the assumption that the gods of Egypt were, at the beginning, local animal gods,1 and that the deification of cosmic objects and forces, such as the earth, the Nile, the sky, and sun, occurred only later, when the Egyptian mind had reached a greater degree of reflective power. This assumption underlies all the present work.
Steindorff has argued2 that we have no evidence that the chief god of a nome’s capital city was the god of the nome as a whole. In reply, it might be said that we have no evidence to the contrary. It is, however, true that in every nome many spirits were venerated; the same was true of each capital city. Could it be shown that the chief deity of the capital city was not originally the chief god of the nome, because it held the hegemony of the principal city, it would ultimately become the chief god of the nome itself. If such a god embodied the ideal of a type of life, such as fishing, hunting, or agriculture, his prestige points to a period in the history of the nome, when that type of economic life predominated.
With the principles here enunciated in mind, we proceed to an analysis of the elements which enter into the make-up of each Egyptian nome as indicated by the nome-name, the name of its capital, the name of its god, and its sacred animal. For the sake of clearness we take them in the order in which the nomes are enumerated in the later Egyptian lists, beginning with those of Upper Egypt. This method presents the disadvantage of studying first nomes that were in some instances overlaid by later immigration
1	Urgeschichte, §§7, 35, and 69-75.
2	See his article “Die ägyptischen Gaue und ihre politische Entwickelung” in Abhandlung der k. sächs. Gesellschaft d. Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Classe. Bd. 27, 1909, p. 871.170
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from other nomes, but this is less confusing than an arbitrarily selected order would be, or an order based upon an unproved hypothesis.
Beginning, then, with the nomes of Upper Egypt and taking them in the order of the later lists, we have:
1. The nome the capital of which was on an island in the First Cataract. This nome was called T^-sty, ‘South-land/ or ‘Frontier-land/ or, as Sethe renders it ‘Nubian-land.’1 Erman and Grapow call it ‘The land (of Egypt) in its southern part.’2 Its capital was 2bw, Greek, T77/3, ‘Elephant/ and was situated on an island in the cataract. According to Sethe the place was so named because in the early time here alone did the Egyptians come in contact with people who employed Elephants.3 The name was later written ^b-hsb, which could be interpreted, ‘Desiring to reckon’4 —a name appropriate to a trading-post with foreigners. The Greeks called it ‘Elephantine.’ It was the frontier town at which trading was carried on with the Nubians. The name Sum, meaning ‘traffic/5 was later given to a trading-post at the First Cataract and survives to this day in the Arabized form ‘Assuan.’ Sethe finds in the name ‘South-land’ or ‘Nubian-land’ evidence that the nome was colonized from the north.6 Its god was Khnum, whose name was derived from a root Qmm) which means ‘unite/ ‘join/ ‘be near/ ‘give rest/ etc.,7 (an agricultural deity of several more northerly nomes), and the sacred animal of the nome was a ram. The nature of the deity and of the sacred animal point to the settlement of the nome by an agricultural people. The settlement was, accordingly, relatively late. Sethe is probably right in believing that the Egyptians who gave these names to the district emigrated hither from older nomes further north. The first nome extended northward to Gebel Silsileh, where the hills come down to the water and the
1	Urgeschichte, §152.
2 Cf. Erman und Grapow, W orterbuch, III, 306. Steindorff, op. cit., p. 871, maintained that this was not the earliest name of the nome, but, if so, the earlier name has been lost.
3	Cf. loc. cit.
4	Cf. Erman und Grapow, op. cit., I, 6, and III, 166.
5	Ibid., IV, 68.
6	Loc. cit.
7	Cf. Erman und Grapow, op. cit., Ill, 377 if.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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Nile flows between through a narrow channel.1 These hills formed a northern barrier which made a natural separation between the first nome and its northern neighbors. Within this nome in later time there was a city, Kom Ombos, which played an important part. It was in the Greek period the capital of the nome. Its god was a hawk-god or Horus.2 The fact that here not only many mummified hawks are found, but many mummified crocodiles also, indicates that here both these animals were sacred.3 It will be seen as our investigation proceeds that both these creatures were totem animals to some of the Hamites. It is possible that they may have been brought hither by the colonists whom Sethe has discerned, but it seems to the writer quite as possible that they may have been the totems of early Hamitic settlers who preceded those immigrants.
2. The second nome lay north of the first and was called Wts.t-hr, ‘The bearer of Horus/ or ‘The exalter of Horus.’4 Sethe translates it ‘Der Tragsessel des Horus’5 (i.e., ‘The sedan-chair of Horus’). The capital of the nome was Db), which meant ‘Float.’ It was expressed by the picture of a papyrus float which was made for hunting the hippopotamus.6 When followed by a certain determinative it designated the ‘harpoon of Horus.’7 The name of the city (Db)) was afterward changed to Bhd.t, meaning, ‘The throne (of Horus)’ and its god was called ‘Horus of Bekhdet.’ The god of the third nome of Lower Egypt was also in the earliest time Horus, and he bore the same apellation.8 Because this Horus was at one time the god of a kingdom of the West Delta, and because he became, in the myth of the war between Horus and Set, the god of the whole of Lower Egypt, Sethe believes that the third Lower Egyptian nome was his original habitat, and that he was carried thence to the second nome of Upper Egypt by emigrants who colonized that nome.9 While these reasons may not seem altogether convincing, it is impossible to disprove this view, and the change of the name of the
1	See Sethe, Urgeschichte, Karte 3.
2	Ibid., §26.
*Ibid., §37, note 2.
4	Cf. Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, I, 382.
5	Op. cit., §150.
6	See Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, Sign List, T, 25.
7	Erman und Grapow, op. cit., V, 560.
8	Sethe, op. cit., §67.
9	Ibid., §§148-151.172
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
capital city from Db) to Bhd.t argues in its favor. The Horus of this nome was by the Greeks identified with Apollo, for they called the capital Apollonospolis Magna. It is now called Edfu. The sacred animal was the hawk.
In the earliest name of the capital-city we discern a settlement antedating the colony which came from Lower Egypt. The town was the mooring-place of the floats of fisherman and hippopotamus-hunters. Perhaps even then its people worshipped the hawk-god Horus and combined hunting with fishing. In spite of the later influx of people from the south, we incline to the belief that the capital of this second nome was one of the earliest settlements of Hamitic folk in Egypt.
3. The symbol of the third nome was the J#/-crown—a crown worn by its goddess. Its early pronunciation is uncertain. Its ancient capital was Nekhbet, on the east bank of the Nile,1 from nhbt, ‘germination,’ ‘shooting up,’ and was called Eileithyiaspolis by the Greeks, now El-Kab. Its goddess was Nekhbet, whose name meant, of course, ‘The germinator.’ She was regarded as the goddess of childbirth, as the Greek name of the city indicates. In Ptolemaic times its capital was Latopolis, on the west of the river, now Senit (Esne). The animals sacred to her were the vulture and the latus-fish. These facts probably point to a primitive settlement of agriculturists, whose life was devoted to the worship of a primitive goddess of fertility, and who were still in the totemistic stage of thought. It is the type of life fostered in the oases of early time. Fishes multiply rapidly and, after settlement was made on the Nile, would naturally become the symbol of a goddess of fertility. Whether the vulture was selected arbitrarily, or whether its choice was dictated by the fact that its name coincided with the word for mother, or by some dark working of the prehistoric mind that we cannot now fathom, we cannot tell. Excavation of the site has afforded archaeological evidence of its anitquity.2 Sethe has shown that there was in prehistoric time a migration from the fifth nome of Lower Egypt which brought to this nome the worship of the goddess Neith and confused it with that of the goddess Nekhbet.3
1	Sethe, Urgeschichte §45.
2	See Quibell, J. E. & Green, F. W., Hierakonpolis, London, 1900-02. (Vols. 4 & 5, Publications of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt.)
*Op. cit. §142.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
173
4.	The name of the fourth nome and of its capital was in Egyptian W^s.tj ‘scepter.’ Its symbol was a scepter, decorated, as so often were pictures of deities in the early time, with a feather, beneath which hang the ends of the string with which it was tied to the scepter.1 This scepter was clearly an old fetish-idol. From the earliest time Mont, the Hawk-god, was worshipped in the nome. Mont figures in the writing at a period so early that his name is accompanied by the picture of the hawk-idol, rather than by the living hawk. Its capital was Nw.t, ‘the city’; the Greeks called it Thebes. After the Eleventh dynasty its god was Ymn (Amen), ‘The hidden one,’2 so called apparently as the god of the dead. His sacred animal was the ram. These facts point to the settlement of the nome by an early tribe (probably Hamitic) which worshipped both a hawk-god and a scepter fetish. Later the nome was overrun by a people who worshipped Ymn (Amen) and were decidedly agricultural and warlike. Though in general the worship of Amen superseded that of Mont, Mont remained to the end as lord of W)s.t and god of war. The first four nomes occupied territory on both sides of the Nile.
5.	The ancient name of the fifth Egyptian nome was Hrwy, ‘The two hawks.’ It lay on both sides of the Nile north of the fourth nome. Its capital was in the early time GsJ?,3 from a root that meant, ‘incline,’4 and as a noun could mean ‘bed.’5 It was later Qus (Kop-tos). The phenomena connected with the nome are complex and indicate a long and mixed history. On the west bank of the Nile lay another city called in early times Nbwt, ‘Gold-city,’ because gold was found in the region back of it.6 The Greeks called it Ombos. In this city the god Set, whose name was written by the picture of an extinct animal which was his totem,7 was worshipped. The god of the nome as a whole was in the historic period Min, who was pictured as a man with erect phallus, but whose symbol was an enigmatical fetish, which Sethe believes, from the form in which it
1	See Sethe, Urgeschichte, §46.
2	Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, I, 259.
3	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §47.
4	Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, V, 205.
5	Ibid., p. 206.
6	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §86.
7	Ibid., §21.174
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
appears in the Pyramid Texts, to have been pictures of teeth—perhaps the teeth of some ferocious animal, which had been secured and regarded as a fetish.1 The two hawks by which the nome is designated probably represented two early deities. Sethe conjectures that they were rival deities that strove for supremacy as Horus and Set are said in the later myth to have done.2 If this be true they may have been the deities of sibs who lived on opposite banks of the Nile. It may be, however, that, instead of being rivals, the hawks were from the beginning, in this case, a male and female pair. In either case their presence indicates the settlement of a Hamitic clan at a very early date. The presence of the god Set at Ombos points to the settlement on the west bank of the Nile of a sib whose totem was the Set-animal—an animal which has been identified with the pig,3 the ass,4 and the extinct okapi,5 but which, as Sethe says, we cannot identify.6 We only know that it was an animal that is now extinct, and this fact guarantees the antiquity of the tribe whose totem the animal could be. Far down into prehistoric time, Set remained the god of Ombos.
These early settlers appear to have suffered invasion by another tribe that had worshipped as a fetish the teeth of some ferocious animal, but, becoming agricultural, had come to regard their god as a deity of fertility. They called him Min, apparently from the root mn, ‘abide/ ‘remain/7 ‘be permanent/ His sacred animal was the ram. After the gods were conceived to possess human form, about the time of the second dynasty, Min was portrayed as a man with phallus erect. This may be seen in the early statue of him found by Petrie at Coptos and now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,8 and also in the picture of him left by Hat-shep-sut of the eighteenth dynasty on the walls of the temple of Der-el-Bakhri.9
1	Ibid.
2	Ibid., §47.
3	Cf. Gardiner, Grammar, Sign-list, E 20, 21; and the references given there.
4	E. A. W. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, I, 102. In later pictures, when Set was represented in human form with this animal’s head, the head looked notunlike that of an ass. See Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 222.
5	Theo. Hopfner, Tierkult der alter Aegypter, p. 101 f., 106.
6	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §87.
7	Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, II, 60.
8	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §21; also Capart, Les debuts de Tart, p. 217.
9	Cf. E. Naville, Deir el-Bahari, V, (London, 1906), Phot. XXXI and XXXII.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
175
In these varied facts we are able to discern, though somewhat dimly, how tribe after tribe and civilization after civilization struggled for the mastery in this important nome through the long centuries of prehistoric time.
6.	The sixth nome was perhaps called d^m and lay on the west of the Nile. Its capital city was called in early time Iwn.t, ‘column/ perhaps because of a massebah, later Tyn-tyrrt, ‘The land of the wet-nurse'1—doubtless a reference to the fact that the sacred animal of the nome was a cow. Its goddess was Ht-hr.t, ‘She of the lofty temple'—a name which in time on the lips of foreigners was corrupted to Hathor. In these facts we can trace nothing very primitive. The cow was clearly the totem of a pastoral or agricultural community. A lofty temple had been erected to her, from which, as already indicated, the name by which the goddess was known was derived. We have no means of knowing by what name the goddess was originally called. In the oldest list (that of Abu Gurab) and in the list of Abydos the name of the nome is written by the picture of a crocodile with a feather (later pictured as a knife2) in his head. Strabo3 and Juvenal4 bear witness to the fact that the crocodile was honored in this nome. Steindorff's suggestion5 that the cow-goddess has conquered a crocodile-god is most probable. This would mean that the nome had been occupied by an early tribe who worshipped the crocodile, but latter gave way to an agricultural tribe who worshipped an earth-goddess under the form of a cow.
7.	The name of the seventh nome was expressed by the picture of a sistrum and was, perhaps, shm, the Egyptian word for the sis-trum. Sometimes in the older period the head of a cow displaced the sistrum. This nome lay on the west bank of the Nile. Its capital wat Ht-shm.w, ‘House of the sistrum.' The Romans called it Diospolis Parva. Its goddess, like the goddess of Dendereh, was called Ht-hr.t, ‘She of the lofty temple,' or Hathor. This does not imply identity of origin; it only implied rivalry between contiguous
1	Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, II, 439.
2	Sethe assumes that the feather is older than the knife, Urgeschichte §49.
3	Bk. XVII, 814.
4	Satires, xv, 33 ff.
5	Steindorff, op. cit., 872 f.176
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
nomes which led to the adoption of the same name. The Hathor of this nome had, so far as we know, no sacred animal. C. L. Wool-ley contends that the sistrum was a Sumerian invention and was introduced from Mesopotamia into Egypt.1 The evidence gathered by Petrie for the belief in the migration into Egypt of tribes from Elam or Mesopotamia, or of tribes which had absorbed the civilization of that region, has been summarized above in Chapter III. It is possible that this seventh nome was settled by invaders from the East, who came of a non-totemistic stock, and who brought the worship of a goddess with them. This goddess was called nhm.t-'wZy, ‘She who seizes the robber/2 and to the latest times her symbol was the sistrum.3 4
8. The eighth nome was in early times Tywrf ‘The great land/ on the west of the Nile. Its earlier capital was Tny (This); its later capital was Abdw, or Abydos. Its symbol was a spear decked out as a standard,5 which was in the historic period the ideogram for east. If it had the same meaning in the earliest period, perhaps it indicates that the nome was settled from the Kharga oasis, which lay directly west of Abydos. If so, the name ‘Great Land’ would naturally be given it as a part of the Nile Valley in contrast with the oasis. Its sacred animals were the jackal or dog, and the beetle. Its original god was Yn-hrt, ‘He who fetches the distant/6 in time his name was corrupted to Onuris. The name probably was an epithet derived from the dog-totem, who brought the prey within the purview of the hunter. In this characteristic of his sacred animal the god was believed to share. In these facts we obtain a glimpse of one of the earliest phases of the Egyptian religion. In later time the worship of Onuris was, by colonization from Lower Egypt, displaced by that of Osiris, who, as already pointed out, was originally a Semitic god. All this, however, took place in prehistoric time.
1	Cf. his Sumerians, New York, 1929, p. 186.
2	Erman und Grapow, W or ter buck, II, 297, and Sethe, Urgeschichte, §28.
3	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §50.
4	Pyramid Texts, 1867.
5	Gardiner, Grammar, Sign-list, R, 16.
6	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §22. Sethe, ibid., §63, thinks Onuris an imported god, though he does not say whence the importation came. I would suggest the Kharga oasis as the source.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
177
9.	The name of the ninth nome was Hm, or Yhm (Akhmim), on the east of the Nile; its capital was Ypw, a word that may be identical with the demonstrative pronoun That/ but may be of quite different derivation. It was called by the Greeks Panopolis. Its god was Min, whose name was written by the same hieroglyph as that of the god of Coptos of the same name, and his sacred animal was the ram. We conjecture, therefore, that this nome had an origin similar to that of Coptos, which it adjoined, and that it may have been formed by a colony from that nome or by an offshoot of it.
10.	The tenth nome which lay north of the ninth on both sides of the Nile consisted apparently of two parts. The one part, a, was called W^d.t, ‘The papyrus-colored snake/ its capital was Tbw; its later capital, on another site, was called by the Greeks Aphrodites-polis. Its goddess was Ht-hr.t, ‘She of the lofty temple’—an epithet which concealed her original name, and confused her with the other Hathors. She was originally a snake-goddess; later her sacred animal was the cow, the totem of an agricultural people.
The other part of the nome, 5, was called *nty-wy, ‘The talons of the two birds of prey/ but in the Abydos list it is indicated by a snake and a harpoon or feather.1 Its capital city was Duka, which the Greeks called Antaeopolis; its god was Horus; its sacred animal was the hawk. These facts point to the presence in the nome of two strands of separate origin, which in religion were never fused. The one, represented by the hawk-god, goes back to a hunting culture for its beginnings and worshipped a masculine deity; the other, represented by the cow-goddess of fertility, is of later pastoral or agricultural origin. Perhaps the lack of fusion is to be explained by the fact that the Nile separated the two parts.
11.	The eleventh nome of Upper Egypt, which lay west of the Nile, bore the name of the god Set, and its name was written by picturing the animal of the god Set as a hieroglyph.2 What that animal was, is not yet definitely determined.3 The capital city of the nome was Syhtp.t, which, perhaps, means ‘Her repulse is at
1	See A. St. G. Caulfeild, The Temples of the Kings at Abydos, London, 1902, PI. XVIII.
2	A different designation is employed in the list of Seti I at Abydos; cf. Caulfeild, Temple of the Kings at Abydos, PI. XVIII. Perhaps it is an early spelling of En-mw; cf. Erman und Grapow, Aegyptisckes Handwörterbuch, p. 229.
3	See the discussion above under the fifth nome.178
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
rest.’1 The Greeks called it Hypsele or ‘Mountain-heights.’ Its god was, in the historic period, Khnum, and its sacred animal the ram. In later tradition Set was the god of the desert. If we are not mistaken, these facts betoken a long development in the prehistoric period. The region was settled by a totemistic tribe from the desert which held this rare animal sacred and worshipped the god Set. This tribe dwelt here so long that its name clung to the nome long after the tribe had been overwhelmed by another. This other was an agricultural or pastoral tribe, to which the ram was sacred. While this second tribe imposed on the nome the worship of its god, the name of the nome perpetuated the name of the older deity worshipped there. Doubtless the invasion by the later people was not accomplished without long strife. When, however, peace was made, and the two peoples made a treaty of amity, the fact appears to have been perpetuated in the name of the capital city which they built.
12.	The name of the twelfth nome was Dw-f, fountain of the horned viper/ on the east bank of the Nile. Its late capital city was Nwt-nt-byk, ‘City of thy incense (O Horns)’; its god was Horus and its sacred animal the hawk. The nome contained another city, Ma'abde, in which many mummified crocodiles were found.2 Apparently the region was in early days the home of more than one Hamitic totemistic sib. Here we apparently find a settlement of an early tribe, of which the hawk was the totem, and whose god, like the gods of the other hawk-tribes, took its name from the bird. The nome was named from the fact that the precipitous banks of the alluvial plain were the home of the horned viper.
13.	The thirteenth nome was named Ndf.t-hent, later Atef-hent which meant, apparently, ‘The first (i.e., southern) atef-tree.’3 Its capital was S)yw.t (later Siut), called by the Greeks Lycopolis. Its sacred animal was the jackal. Its god was called Wpt-w^t, ‘Opener of ways/ which was later interpreted to mean ‘He who prepares the way for the king in battle/4 but which probably originally
1 Erman und Grapow, W orterbuch, III, 412. It is the Coptic ojutt}, modern Shuth.
2Sethe, Urgeschichte, Karte 2 and §37, n. 2.
3	Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, I, 23. It has been conjectured that atef does not designate a species of tree, but means ‘fruit-tree/ See Meyer, Allgemeine Ges-chichte, I, i, Berlin, 1887, p. 209.
4	Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, I, 304.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
179
referred to the dog-totem, who ran ahead of his master to prepare the way in hunting. In this nome, therefore, we see another settlement of one of the early totemisic tribes, but, as in the case of Aby-dos, a hunting tribe which had already domesticated the dog.
14.	The fourteenth nome was known as Ndf.t-phw.t, later Atef-phwy, ‘The hindermost (or northern) atef-tree/ Its capital was Qsi (Cusae), a name which I am unable to analyze. Its sacred, animal was the cow, and its goddess, Ht-hr.t, ‘She of the lofty temple’ Thus, this nome appears to have been settled by an agricultural people, kindred in culture to the settlers of Dendereh and Aphro-ditespolis. Both the thirteenth and fourteenth nomes lay to the west of the Nile. Their names show that they had a similar origin. Perhaps they came into existence like North and South Dakota, by the division of a territory that earlier had been a unit. This is Sethe’s view.1 He also believes that the naming of the nomes from a tree indicates that the tree was a fetish, or, as I would prefer, a totem. If there was such a division, it took place before the fifth dynasty, for both nomes are mentioned in the tomb of Ptahhetep, who lived in the reign of Issesi.2
15.	The fifteenth nome,on both banks of the Nile, was called Wn.ty the hare-nome. Sethe rightly holds that at the beginning the people worshipped a hare-god.3 Its capital, Hmnwy bore a name identical with the numeral ‘eight’ and the name was expressed in writing by that numeral. Perhaps it meant the ‘Eightfold city.’ Its sacred animal was the baboon, and, in the historic period, its god was Dhwty (Thoth), whose name was expressed by the picture of an ibis. The Greeks, who identified Thoth with Hermes, called the capital city Hermopolis. These facts seem to betoken a settlement in which two strands were blended. Both strands were to-temistic: to the one the ibis was sacred; to the other the baboon. Sethe rightly holds that the Ibis-god, Thoth, was brought into this nome by migration from the fifteenth nome of Lower Egypt, which was his native habitat.4 This would account for his invasion of the territory of the hare-baboon god.
1	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §57.
2	See N. G. Davies, The Mastaha of Ptahhetep and Akhethetep at Saqqareh, II, London, 1901, Pl. XIV, lowest register.
3	Sethe, op. cit., §60. Perhaps in early picture-writing the hare and the baboon were not distinguished.
4	Ibid., §143.180
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
16.	The sixteenth nome, on the east bank of the Nile, was named Myhd, a name which was written with the picture of a hawk and a picture of an oryx.1 Its capital was Hbnw, or Hibiu, variously called in later times Hipponon,2 Ibiu, and Ribis.3 Its god was Horus and while no Greek or Roman writer assigns to the nome any sacred animal, as the nome was designated by the oryx or antelope, and its god was the hawk-god Hr or Horus, it is possible that both these creatures were regarded as totems.4 If so, these facts point to the blending of two strands of population in this nome in prehistoric time, one of which associated the oryx with its deity, while the other worshipped a hawk-god, one of many that, because of identity of totem, were blended into the later god Horus. It is possible that the two pictures were simply orthographic. In later history this nome played at times a prominent part. It was called The Nurse of Khufu,’5 the builder of the great pyramid, and it was within the limits of this nome that Amenophis IV built his capital Akhetaton, the ruins of which are found at the modern El-Amarna. The famous tombs at Benihasn, constructed in the XHth dynasty, are also within its limits.
17.	The seventeenth nome, on the west bank of the Nile, was called Ynpw (Anubis). Its capital was in later times Kys'f.t, ‘Ox-back city/ Its god was Anubis, and his sacred animal the jackal.6
1	In the XIIth dynasty list at Lisht it is written with the oryx alone; cf. J. E. Gautier et G. Jequier, Memoir sur les fouilles de Licht, (Tom. VI of Mémoires publiés par les membres de Vinstitut française d’archéologie orientale), Cairo, 1902, p. 24. In the list of Seti I at Abydos the oryx is accompanied by a symbol that is unknown to me; Cf. Caulfeild, Temple of the Kings at Abydos, PL XVIII.
2	So Budge (op. cit., p. 98) and Hopfner, (op. cit., p. 9).
3	Cf. E. Meyer, Geschichte des alten Aegyptens, Berlin, 1887, p. 193.
4	Steindorff thinks the nome-name was the writing of the name of a veiy old capital of it. He doubts that the gazelle (oryx) was a sacred animal in the nome, since he finds no mention of the fact in old Eypytian sources. The oryx figured in the mythology of the Graeco-Roman period (cf. Hopfner, op. cit., 99-101), but the myths do not connect it with this nome. Sethe, however, Ur geschichte §61, assumes from the analogy of other nomes that the oryx was at the beginning the divine animal.
5	Cf. E. Meyer, Geschichte des alten Aegyptens, p. 192.
6	Sethe, Urgeschichte, p. 19, points out that in an original wrapping of an animal mummy, published in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Supplement, 1914, p. 18, Anubis, as god of the dead, is represented by a post on which the skin of an animal is hung. Before seeing this the writer had noted a similar picture, carried apparently, as a nome standard, in the Vth dynasty. Cf. G. Borchardt, Re-HeiligtumEGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
181
Both the name of the god and of the nome were written with the picture of a recumbent jackal or dog. The city was called by the Greeks Cynopolis. These facts indicate that a tribe, which in the hunting stage of culture had adopted the dog or jackal as its totem, settled here and passed into the agricultural stage of culture. It perpetuated the worship of its old jackal-deity.* 1
18.	The eighteenth nome lay east of the Nile and was called Sp, apparently from the root spJ?, To fly/ ‘let fly.’2 It was written with the hieroglyph of a flying bird, and probably meant ‘the nome of the flying hawk.’3 Its god, in the historic period, was Anubis, and its sacred animal the jackal. It seems clear that an early Hamitic tribe who worshipped the flying hawk settled the nome. These early settlers were later overwhelmed by emigrants from the Anubis nome, who settled on the east bank of the Nile and, separated from their kinsfolk by the river, blended with the earlier settlers. The capital of the nome in late times was Ht-stn.t, ‘Royal temple/ which the Greeks called Alabastropolis.
19.	The nineteenth nome, which lay on the west of the Nile opposite the eighteenth, bore the name Wj?bw.t, a word of uncertain signification. Perhaps, as employed here, it was the rope of a fishing boat4 or a fish line. Its capital was, in later time, Pr-m'd.t, which might be translated ‘Road-house.? Its god was Set, and its sacred animal the sharp-nosed fish.5
20.	The twentieth nome, like the thirteenth, was named after a tree. It was called N'r.l-hent, ‘The foremost (or southern) n'r
des Königs Ne-woser-re, Berlin, 1905, Bd. II, Blatt 13, upper register. This is very interesting, as the sign for the goddess Ishtar in early Babylonian appears to have been a post similarly behung with the skin of an animal, as Hommel suggested more than thirty years ago. See OBW, II, no. 116. This symbol, when once recognized, appears on a number of other monuments in other connections, cf. Caulfeild, op. cit., PI. XV, 5, Petrie, The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties, London, 1901, Part II, PL X 2, XI 2, III A 5, 6. It appears to have had a fairly wide use, and the streamers attached to a large number of standards (cf. for example, Caulfeild, op. cit., PL II, XII, XIII, XIV) were, perhaps, a conventionalization of it.
1	Cf. Sethe, Urgeschichte, §§9-12.
2	Cf. Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, III, 441.
3	So Sethe, op. cit., §62.
4	Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, I, 251.
5	Idols in the form of fishes were made here until the Greek period; cf. Sethe, Urgeschichte, §37, n. 4.182
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
tree.1’ It lay on both sides of the Nile. Probably in the beginning the tree-nymph was the totem of the inhabitants of the nome.2 Its capital in the late period was Nny-nsw.t,3 meaning, apparently, ‘The child which is his’ or, as a whole, ‘The city of the child which is his/ The sign first written might also be read stn, ‘Royal/ The meaning would then be ‘The city of the child which is royal/ and the reference would be to a deity. The Greeks called it Herakleopolis. Its deity was called Hy-s-f, ‘He who is over his lake’—a reference to the pool (perhaps artificial) near the temple. The ram was sacred to him. Later he was identified with Khnum. These facts indicate that this nome, just south of the Fayum, was settled by a pastoral, or agricultural people, whose deity was the deity of fertility conceived as the child of the tree-goddess. He can hardly have been Osiris, for he is not identified by any stratum of Egyptian thought with that god. He is rather some deity of Hamitic or Nubian origin, whom we cannot now identify more closely.
21. The twenty-first nome, like the tenth, was composed of two parts, each possessed of its own characteristics. This nome comprised the Fayum district with its lake, and the land between the Fayum and the Nile. The Greeks called it the Arsinoite nome. The first part, a, was called N'r.t-phw, ‘The hindermost (or northern) n'r tree/ Its capital was Smn-hr.t, ‘The goose of Horus/4 Its god was Khnum, and the ram was sacred to him. This part of the nome was an offshoot of the twentieth nome.5
The name of the second part, b, which lay in the Fayum, was jT>-S, ‘Lake-land/ Its capital city was Mh-d.t, which the Greeks called Crocodilopolis. Its god was Sbk, and his sacred animal the crocodile. In these facts we see evidence of a long history. In the Fayum there developed an early tribe, devoted to the crocodile-god Sobek. Later an agricultural tribe, perhaps an offshoot of the Herakleopolite nome, occupied the part of their territory which
1	N’r was a tree which furnished wood for building ships; cf. Erman und Gra-pow, W orterbuch, II, 208;—perhaps the pomegranate tree; cf. Griffith, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, III, 142.
2	Sethe, op. cit., §59.
3	So Gardiner, Grammar, Sign-list, A 17. Formerly it was read Hnensu; so Budge, op. cit., p. 98, and Hopfner, op. cit., p. 9.
4	See Erman und Grapow, W orterbuch, IV, 136.
6 Sethe, op. cit., p. 59.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS	183
gave them an outlet Nileward, and the two elements were never quite fused.
22. The twenty-second nome, the last nome of Upper Egypt, lay on the east of the Nile opposite the twenty-first nome. Its name was Mtn, spelled M'tennu.t in Piankhi’s inscription. It apparently was the name of a knife or hatchet.1 Its capital was Tp-k^d, ‘Over the cattle/ or ‘Chief of the herd/ Its goddess was Ht-hrd (Hathor), ‘She of the lofty temple’; her sacred animal was the cow. Clearly this nome was of similar origin to that of the sixth and seventh nomes. Perhaps it was first peopled by emigrants from the sixth nome, who, finding the land fully occupied on the west bank of the Nile, were compelled to cross it, and gained a foothold here.
LOWER EGYPT
The twenty nomes of Lower Egypt afford the following facts.
1. The first nome of this section, which occupied both banks of the Nile just above the Delta, was called Ynb-hd, ‘White wall/ from the wall of the city of Memphis. Its capital city, originally known from the color of its wall as Ynb-hd, was from the Vlth dynasty onwards, known as Men-nofer, ‘Beautiful Monument/ from the name of the pyramid of Pepi I, which was built near to its wall.2 By the Greek period it was corrupted to Memphis. The god of the nome was Ptah, to whom the bull was sacred. The bull, in which the god was believed to be incarnated, was called Apis, probably the name of a bull-god. The name of the god Ptah is connected by Erman with the Semitic root flJUD, ‘to open/ which in Egyptian was employed not only in the sense ‘open/ but also to signify ‘to shape’ or ‘form/ and ‘throw down.’3 As Ptah was regarded as the god of artisans, it was doubtless applied to him to signify ‘The Shaper/ ‘Fashioner,’ or ‘Maker.’
In these facts may be read the story of a long development. The nome was settled by an agricultural tribe of Hamites who worshipped the bull-god. Into this settlement there came later a Semitic group of craftsmen, who were fused with the Hamitic tribe, adopted their god, but gave him the epithet ‘Maker/ which later
1	Erman und Grapow, op. cit., II, 171.
2	Cf. Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 132 f.
3	Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, 1, 565 f.184
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
superseded his original name. Whatever the original name of the tribe may have been, it has been obscured by the names given at various times to its capital city. Sethe believes the region to have been first organized as a nome by Mena.1
2.	The second nome lay on the west bank of the Nile, just at the beginning of the Delta. Its name was expressed by the hieroglyph which pictures the dissevered foreleg of an ox, and is variously read by Egyptologists.2 Its capital was Hm,3 later Shm.t (Sekhmet),4 called by the Greeks Letopolis. Its sacred animal was the hawk, and its god was Hr-wr, ‘The great hawk/ or ‘The great Horus/ He was worshipped at an early time in the form of a bird-idol5 and was called Hnty-n-ir.ty, ‘The eyeless one.’6 Apparently we have here another of those early Hamitic tribes devoted to the hawk-totem. Sethe believes that Horus worship was carried from here to Coptos in Upper Egypt.
3.	The third nome occupied the west shore of the Delta at the extreme northwestern corner. Its symbols were a feather and a hawk. It was called popularly Ymn.t, ‘The west/ Later it was called the Lybian nome. Its capital was Nw.t-nt-hyp, ‘The city of Hapi/ a bull-god. Its deity was Ht-hr.t, ‘She of the lofty temple/ and her sacred animal the cow. Apparently in this nome there was a blending of different phases of culture and of deities of fertility. The worship of the hawk was here very primitive. Sethe believes that it was from here that it spread to the other nomes where it is found.7 In this nome was an ancient city Bhd.t (Bekhdet), apparently the earliest capital of the nome, which was called Dmy-n-Hr, ‘The resting (place)8 of Horus/ which he translates ‘The native land (Heimat) of Horus/ This place still survives as Damanhur (Coptic Timinhor), a place sixty-four kilometers from Alexandria on the railway to Cairo.9 Undoubtedly the nome is one of the oldest
1	Urgeschichte, §42.
2 Budge, op. cit., p. 99, reads it Khensu; Hopfner, op. cit., p. 9, Aa, while Erman und Grapow, Handworterbuch, p. 230, read dw$w. The last is doubtless correct.
3	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §11.
4	Budge, op. cit., p. 99.
5	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §11.
6	Ibid., §141.
7	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §77.
8	Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, V, 453 £f.
9	Sethe, op. cit., §85.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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Hamitic settlements in the Nile valley. Hither came a tribe of hunters whose totem was the hawk, and the nome was named for him.1 These early settlers were later invaded by agriculturists who brought with them the worship of a goddess of fertility, who in time, because of her lofty temple, was called Ht-hr.t, ‘She of the lofty temple/ an epithet which, as we have seen, was fashionable in many parts of Egypt. To her the cow was sacred. The name of the later capital shows that with her the bull-god Apis was worshipped.
4.	The fourth nome, which lay apparently fairly north of the second, but across the westernmost, or Rosetta, branch of the Nile, had for its hieroglyph a shield crossed by two arrows followed by the hieroglyph for ‘south.’ It is read Spy-re^, or Spy-smt, ‘Southern Sepy/ in contradistinction to the fifth nome. The crossed arrows were the ancient symbol of the goddess Neith.2 The nome must accordingly have been a late offshoot of the fifth nome. The capital of this nome was Dq' (Dheqa), which perhaps survives3 in the modern Tukh,4 109 miles from Alexandria on the Alexandria-Cairo railway. Its sacred deities were Sobek, Isis, and Amen; in later times its sacred animal was the ram. It would seem that at least four strata can be detected in this nome. There was first a time when it was part of the Neith nome. Then came Hamitic settlers who worshipped the crocodile-god. With these were mingled Semitic immigrants who brought the worship of Isis. In the historical period, after the rise of Thebes, the cult of Amen was introduced. Probably it was the introduction of these extraneous elements which led to the separation from the fifth nome.
5.	The fifth nome lay directly north of the fourth. Its symbol was the same shield crossed by two arrows, but in this case it was followed by the hieroglyph (also read mh), meaning ‘north.’ The people of this nome, then, were the ‘Northern Sepys.’ As Dumichen long ago saw, the fourth and fifth nomes at the beginning formed one settlement which was later divided. The capital city
1	Cf. the reference to Horus and the Horns nome in Sethe, Altaegyptische Pyramid-texte 211, b, c, and also Sethe, Urgeschichte, §135.
2	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §19, and Gardiner, Grammar, Sign-list, R 24.
3	So Dümichen, in Meyer’s Allgemeine Geschichte 7, p. 250.
4	Baedeker’s Egypt, Leipzig, 1902, p. 23.186
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
of the fifth nome was S^w.t (Sais). Its deity was the goddess Nr.t1 (Neifh), meaning ‘The terrible one/2and its sacred animal the vulture. This nome was clearly settled by one of the early Hamitic tribes who worshipped a goddess that was both a deity of fertility and of war, and who prided themselves upon their prowess in arms under her banner. The nome apparently was once the seat of a prehistoric Delta kingdom,3 and in the late historic period furnished Egypt its twenty-sixth dynasty—a dynasty which reverenced Egypt’s long past. The characteristics of the founders of the nome were never really obliterated until Egypt passed forever under a foreign yoke.
6. The sixth nome was called in the earlier time Dw-k$, ‘Cattle mountain.’4 As the name ‘mountain’ was manifestly inappropriate to the papyrus marshes of the region, it was later changed to smt-k (later pronounced H)s-w5), ‘Cattle desert’6 or ‘Cattle pasture.’ The earliest settlement which we can trace in the territory with the city was Db'-wtj7 meaning, perhaps, ‘The finger-shaped oasis.’8 In the early time the worship of two deities can be traced in the city, the poisonous urasus-serpent and the hawk-god Horus.9 The city became the capital of one of the prehistoric kingdoms of the western Delta, and from that time it was known as‘The throne-city’ (.P-nw.t), of which ‘Buto’ is a corruption.10 After this city had held its sway for a long time and won for itself a place in Egyptian tradition that is reflected in various passages of the Pyramid Texts,11 it declined and another capital, situated considerably to the south of Buto on the east bank of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, emerged. It was called	the corruption of the old name of the nome men-
tioned above. It came into Greek as Chois and, as such, played its part in the later history. In the later nome-lists, the god of this sixth nome is Amen-re and its sacred animal the ram.12
1	See Gardiner, loc. cit.
2	See Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, II, 277.
3	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §81.
4	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §63; cf the sign-list, O 26, in Gardiner’s Grammar.
5	Sethe, op. cit., §186.
6	0 25, of Gardiner’s list.
7	Sethe, op. cit., §170.
8	See Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, V, 562 ff, and I, 380.
9	Sethe, op. cit., §63.
10	Ibid., §70.
11	See §§601a, 734c and 1488b.
12	Cf. Erman und Grapow, Handwörterbuch, p. 231, and Hopfner, Tierktdt, p. 9.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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In these facts one perceives a long and varied history. In early times three distinct sibs, all of Hamitic origin, settled in the nome. One worshipped the snake-deity. This tribe apparently came first, for this urseus-serpent, which was the tutelary deity of the royal line of Buto, and which became, in the historic period, the symbol of royalty, was the most characteristic god of Buto. Into this territory there came later a sib which worshipped the hawk-god; perhaps it migrated hither from the third nome. Still later, but still in prehistoric time, there came yet another sib which had as its totem a wild bull of the desert mountain. This sib probably occupied territory about the site of the city of Chois, but became so powerful that it ultimately gave its name and symbol to the nome as a whole. Far down in the historic period, after the Middle Kingdom had made the worship of Amen common to the whole country and Amen had been blended with Re, a sufficient number of the devotees of this god migrated hither from the Theban nome to absorb in the worship of their god the older cults and to make his sacred animal, the ram, supersede the older totems.
7. The names of the seventh and eighth nomes were identical except that they were distinguished by the adjectives ‘east’ and Vest/ similar to East Farnham and West Farnham and similar names in modern times. Originally they clearly formed one nome for they were still one in the time of the fifth dynasty.1 The name of the seventh nome is written with the picture of a boat equipped with a bank of oars, above which is the one-pronged harpoon, w' (Gard. T, 21), most often employed in later writing to express the numeral ‘one.’2 As yet we are in doubt how the ancient Egyptians vocalized the nome-name. In the name of this seventh nome these symbols are followed by the sign Ymt, ‘west.’ The nome lay at the southern point of the middle Delta, east of Sepy-res, the fourth nome. The Egyptian name of its capital in late time was Snty-nfr.t,3 meaning ‘Beautiful copy/ a term applied to a temple as a copy of heaven.4 The Greeks called it Metelis.5 Its god was H‘The
1	See N. G. Davies, The Mastaba of Ptahhetep and Akhethetep at Saqqareh, II, pi. XV, lower register. Cf, also Sethe, Urgeschichte, §41, n. 3.
2	See Sethe, op. cit., §41, n. 3.
3	So Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, p. 99, and Hopfner, Tierkult, p. 9.
4	Cf. Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, III, 456 ff.
5	Erman und Grapow, Handwörterbuch, p. 231.188
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
desert spirit/1 whose name, so far as I know, plays no important part in the later religion. Neither Budge nor Hopfner assign a sacred animal to this nome, nor does any other modern writer known to me. However Aelian, in his De natura animalium, XI, 17, says: “In Metelis of Egypt a serpent (dpaiccov) is sacred (lepos) and is honored in a tower and has attendants and servants, and a table and punchbowl are prepared for him.”2 It is evident, then, that the serpent was sacred to this god HThese facts point to the settlement of the nome by a desert tribe whose totem was a serpent.3 In their Egyptian habitat they first maintained themselves by fishing, and in later time perpetuated the memory of this period by the symbols of the boat and harpoon. They were Hamites and the settlement of the nome was early.
8. The name of the eighth nome was expressed by the same symbols as that of the seventh, except that the sign for ‘west’ was replaced by the sign F}bt, ‘east’ (Gard. R, 15). It lay to the east of the seventh nome adjoining Wady Tumilat, the natural highway from the Delta to the Red Sea. Its capitals were Tkt, Succoth, a good Semitic word, and Pitum, ‘House of the god Turn or Tm.’ Its god was4 Tm, or Ytm, who was apparently an early agricultural deity.5 The nome had, so far as we know, no sacred animal. This nome was apparently for a long time a part of the seventh nome. Into it Semitic immigrants from Asia came, forming at first a tent
1	So Sethe, op. cit., §20.
2	Quoted by Hopfner in bis Fontes Historiae Religionis Aegyplicae, 1922-25, p. 425; it was published nine years later than his Tierkult.
3	As a serpent goddess was found at Tell Beit Mirsim (Albright, Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible p. 87f.), and at Bethshean a serpent deity was worshipped, (see Rowe, Museum Journal, XIX, 1928, p. 155), and as a serpent deity was worshipped at Delphi in Greece (not to mention other parts of the world), and as neither Semites nor Greeks were totemistic, there may be some reason to doubt whether the serpent at Metelis was a totem. In view, however, of the fact that in at least two other nomes (the tenth of Upper Egypt and the sixth of Lower Egypt) serpents were totems, the weight of probability is in favor of the view expressed in the text.
4	Erman und Grapow, W orterbuch, V, 301.
5	The sledge was, among the Egyptians, a threshing instrument and indeed still is; (see the writer’s Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., Fig. 80). Turn (Atum) was, accordingly, perhaps god of the harvest. Sethe, Urgeschichte, §114, declares that the name Tm means ‘all’ (i.e., the sledge-picture is used phonetically) and that the god Tm had no early existence as a separate deity, but was an abstraction of the priests of On. The present writer is not convinced of the correctness of this view, but, if it is correct, the whole development of this eighth nome would be comparatively late.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
189
city which became Succoth. In time this new element became agricultural and adopted Egyptian civilization, making the spirit of the sledge their god. The second capital, Pitum, was made important in the historic period by the buildings of Ramses II.
9.	The ninth nome lay considerably north of the seventh on the west side of the main branch of the Nile in the eastern Delta. Its early name was 'nd.t, meaning ‘Uninjured/ an epithet of Osiris;1 its later name was Yty, ‘Prince,’ also an epithet of Osiris. Its capital was Pr-)sr, corrupted later to Busiris (the modern Abu Sir), and meaning ‘Dwelling of Osiris.’ Its god was Osiris, and it had in the historic period no sacred animal. These facts, as is generally recognized, point to the settlement of the nome by an early invasion of Semites.
10.	The tenth nome lay on the east of the Damietta branch of
the Nile, north of the thirteenth nome. It was called Kykm, ‘Black Bull’ or “Black Cattle,” later Ktn-wr, ‘Great black (bull).’ Its capital was	‘Temple of the land in the midst’ or
‘Temple of the middle land.’2 Its god was the hawk-god Horus, and the shrew-mouse was sacred to him. The capital city was called by the Greeks Athribis. Clearly we have here a settlement of a Hamitic clan that worshipped the shrew-mouse, which was later invaded by one of the many4 hawk-clans, and with whose worship that of the earlier deity was fused. Probably they were settled before Semites invaded the land and hemmed them in on the south, east, and north. The name of the capital indicated, perhaps, their consciousness of their central position in the land.
11.	The eleventh nome lay directly north of the tenth. Its name was K$-hsby ‘Cattle counting;’3 its capital city, Hsb-k^.t, had the same meaning. Perhaps the names meant a ‘Round-up of Cattle.’ The city was by the Greeks called Kabasos. Its god was Isis, to whom no animal was sacred. These facts point clearly to the origin of this nome as a settlement by pastoral Semites.
12.	The twelfth nome lay on the east of the Damietta branch of the Nile to the north of the eleventh. Its name was Tb-k%, ‘Cow and calf,’4 and its capital city Tb-ntr.t, ‘Divine Calf-town,’ the Greek
1	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §106.
2	Perhaps hr-$b is to be rendered ‘in the heart/ in the sense of ‘dear,’ instead of ‘in the midst/ The name would then mean ‘Temple of the land dear (to the god)/
3	Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, III, 166.
4Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, V, 361; cf. Sethe, Urgeschichte, §103.190
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Sebennytos. The nome-name is expressed by the picture of a bull and a gamboling calf, and probably designated it as a “ Cattleraising nome.” The name of the city would in that case signify The city of the cattle-raising god.’ Its god was Yn-hr.t, Onuris, which is here spelled so as to mean ‘He who fetches from heaven/1 The beetle was sacred to him. These facts point to the view that the nome was a settlement of Hamites who originally worshipped the dog-god Onuris, but who, having settled in the fertile Delta-land, became cattle raisers. Perhaps because the beetle breeds so rapidly in manure and refuse, and because rapid breeding is important to cattle raisers, they, in time, adopted the beetle as their totem, and the dog-totem of the hunting stage of their life fell into disuse. In the Roman period the nome was divided into two, Sebennytos aval tottoiv, of which Pachnomunis was the capital, and Sebennytos kclto) tottuv, of which Sebennytos was the capital.2
13. The thirteenth nome lay on the east bank of the Nile just opposite the second at the southern apex of the Delta. Its name was Hq-'d (or 'nd), ‘Shepherd of prosperity’3 or ‘Prosperous shepherd.’ Its capital was 'n (On), which, apparently meaning ‘column,’4 probably designated originally a sacred pillar or massebah. The Greeks called it Heliopolis. Its god was at the first Ytm (Atum), who, since his name was expressed by the sledge—a threshing instrument—was doubtless, like the god of the eighth nome, an agricultural deity.5 Before the time of the Old Kingdom he had been identified with the sun and given the name Re; hence the Greek name for the place. The bull was sacred to him. The evidence afforded by these facts indicates that the nome was settled by a Hamitic tribe in the agricultural stage of development. In the long centuries of prehistoric time this nome became the capital of an East-Delta king-dome, as Bhd.t was the capital of a West-Delta kingdom.6 It thus attained a preeminence which it never lost—an eminence which was
1	Gardiner, Grammar, Sign-list, N, 1.
2	Sethe, Urgeschichte, §68.
3	Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, I, 239.
4	See Gardiner, Grammar, Sign-list, O 28.
5	Reasons for regarding Atum as more than a late abstraction have already been expressed above in discussing nome 8.
6	See Sethe, Urgeschichte, §135.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
191
enhanced in the historic period by the fact that its priestly family furnished the fifth dynasty.
14.	The fourteenth nome lay apparently at the extreme northeast of the Delta. Its eastern border was the line of the present Suez Canal and the southern end of Lake Menzaleh. It bore the name Hnt-y^bt, ‘Eastern frontier;’ its capital was T^-rw, ‘Lion-globule’ or ‘Lion-kernel’—a compound, which, in this connection, is of uncertain signification. The Greeks called the city Sile. It is the modern El Kantara.1 Its deity was a hawk-god or Horus, to whom both the hawk and lion were sacred. The facts indicate an original settlement by a Hamitic tribe having a lion totem, with which, later, a tribe with a hawk-totem mingled. Its capital city long constituted an Egyptian frontier stronghold toward Asia.
15.	The fifteenth nome lay on the east of the Damietta branch of of the Nile, northwestward from the fourteenth nome, and west from the Lake Menzaleh. Its name was Dwty, the name of the god Thoth; its capital was Pr-dwty, ‘Temple of Thoth,’ which the Greeks called Hermupolis, and which has been identified with the modern Bakliyeh.2 In the Roman period the capital was Thmuis, where, according to St. Jerome, the he-goat was sacred.3 Its god was Thoth, to whom the Ibis and the baboon were sacred. Sethe believes4 * that this Ibis-god, Thoth, originated here, and that he was carried from here to the fifteenth nome of Upper Egypt by migration. In this view the present writer concurs. As pointed out in discussing the fifteenth nome of Upper Egypt, the baboon was the sacred animal of that nome, and the ibis of the nome we are now discussing. That the baboon should have become sacred in the Thoth-nome of Lower Egypt is doubtless due to reflex influence from the Upper Egyptian nome after the two sibs had been fused in Upper Egypt.
16.	The sixteenth nome lay to the south of the fifteenth. Its name was expressed by one of the pictures of the oxyrhincus-fish H), and perhaps was pronounced ‘Kha.’ As the name of its early deity meant ‘The point of the fish,’6 the fish was probably the totem of
1	Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, V, 355.
2	See Baedeker, Ägypten, ed. 1928, p. 176.
3	Cf. Sethe, Urgeschichte, §68, and Hopfner, Fontes Hist. Aegypt.f p. 641 ff.
4	Urgeschichte, §143.
6 Sethe, Urgeschichte, §64.192
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
the early settlers. The capital, in the historic period, was Pr-by nb-ddy.t, ‘The temple of the soul of the lord of the two Osiris-posts,’ later understood to be ‘lord of eternity.’ The Greeks corrupted it to Mendes. The later god was Khnum, and the ox or ram was sacred to him. The evidence appears to reveal a settlement by a native Hamitic tribe, into which a Semitic element was afterward introduced.
17.	The seventeenth nome lay on the Mediterranean coast, directly to the west of what is now Lake Menzaleh. Its name was Smybhdt, which may possibly have meant ‘Union with Horus of Bekhdet.’1 Its capital was Pyhn-n-ymn, which could mean ‘The singer2 (glorifier) of Amen.’ Its god was Amen-Re, and no animal, so far as is known, was sacred to him. These facts point to two settlements of the nome by emigrants from other nomes. The first was a migration from the third Lower Egyptian nome,3 4 5 and took place in the prehistoric period. The memory of this settlement survived only in the nome-name. The second migration was from the fourth nome of Upper Egypt, and occurred not earlier than the Middle Kingdom. It brought to the nome the worship of Amen-Re and determined the name of the later capital of the nome. Curiously, we have no evidence that either the hawk of Horus or the ram of Amen survived as sacred animals.
18.	The eighteenth nome was apparently at first called Ynp^-hnt (later Ymh-hnt), ‘The first (or southern) royal child.’ The name was evidently the epithet of a deity. It is evident from the names that the eighteenth and nineteenth nomes were originally one. Sethe has conjectured6 that at that time the capital was Im.t. This was a city, the site of which was later in the ninteenth nome—a city which had once worshipped the papyrus-colored uraeus-serpent w$dy, and so was called w^dy.t, and, like its sister-city in the Western Delta, was called by the Greeks Buto.7 By the historic period
1	Erman und Grapow, Worterbuch, III, 448.
2	Ibid., §286.
3	Cf. Sethe, Urgeschichte, §85.
4	Cf. Gardiner’s Grammar, Sign-list, A 18.
5	Cf. Sethe, Urgeschichte, §65.
6Ibid.
7 It was later famous for its wine. The site is the modern Tell Nebeshe; cf. Sethe Ibid.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
193
the nome had been divided, and the capital of its southern portion was Pr-bsty ‘Temple of Bast/ later called Bubastis. It is the Pi-beseth of Ezekiel 30:17. Its deity was the goddess Bast, to whom the cat was sacred. The word bst also means ‘oil-jar/ The history that can thus be traced is a long and complicated one. We have first the settlement of Buto by Hamites who worshipped the uraeus-serpent. Later the nome was invaded by a people who worshipped ‘The royal child’—perhaps Osiris. If so, they were Semites. This invasion must have been late in the prehistoric period. Later the southern part, or the eighteenth nome, was settled by a Hamitic tribe which worshipped a goddess whose totem was the cat, and which in its new home developed the culture of some form of oil-manufacture. In time they came to regard their goddess as the patroness of this culture. The division of the nome into two was probably occasioned by this immigration. The nome lay to the south of the modern Zagazig.
19.	The nineteenth nome was clearly originally part of the eighteenth, for its name was Ynp-phwy (later Ym-phwy), ‘Last (or northern) royal child.’ Its capital was, at various times, Pr-w^dt, ‘Temple of W)dtJ or Buto, D'n.t, Tanis, and Swn, ‘The fortress,’ i.e., Pelusium.1 Its goddess was Wjdt, the papyrus-colored uraeus-snake, to whom the shrew-mouse, the ichneumon, and the serpent were sacred. She was also represented with a lion’s head. It seems clear that at different times several Hamitic stocks settled in the nome, each bringing its distinctive totem. As already suggested, Semitic worshippers of Osiris were perhaps among them. It is well known that in the historic period the Hyksos kings, who were invaders from Asia, made Tanis their capital. Possibly they were its founders. This historic fact brought into the nome a large Asiatic element (Semitic and Hurrian) after the time of the Middle Kingdom.
20.	The twentieth nome, which lay to the south of the nineteenth, along the frontier, was called in ancient time Spd, or Sopdu, ‘Sharp point.’ Its god bore the same name. Both names were written by the same symbols—an upright thorn followed by the archaic picture of a falcon.2 Spd meant ‘pointed,’ ‘sharp,’ and was at once
1 Cf. Erman und Grapow, Handwörterbuch, 231, and Sethe, Urgeschichte, §65.
2	Cf. Gardiner’s Sign-list, G 13.194
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
descriptive of the thorn and of a sickness.1 The serpent was sacred to him. Sethe thinks that the pointed thorn, indicating sharpness, points to an original fetish of sharp teeth like the symbol of the god Min,2 and that the hawk-god was a later introduction. As the totem of the nome was a serpent, it seems to the present writer more probable that the sharp point denoted the serpent’s tongue. On this hypothesis the nome was first settled by a serpent-worshipping clan with which a hawk-worshipping clan afterward fused. The nome, like the third or Lybian nome, appears to have been one of the oldest in the Delta. The symbol of its god Sopdu was a hawk resting on a bed,3 the significance of which is obscure. Sopdu is sometimes called in the Pyramid Texts ‘He who is under the ksb-tree,’ and the capital Pr-spdw.t, which lay near the entrance of the land of Goshen, ‘House of the ksb-tree.’ These were fruit trees,4 so that the nome must have been famed for these trees. In later times this was called the Arabian nome.
We have now completed our survey of the forty-two nomes of Egypt. Uncertain as many of our conclusions confessedly are, we believe that the application of the principles derived from the study of existing preliterate religions to Egypt’s gods, animal-worship, place-names, and the symbols by which these are written, give us a real glimpse of the history of the settlement of the Nile valley, which supplements convincingly the picture presented by the amazingly illuminative researches into Egyptian prehistoric archaeology. Such a historical view was impossible as long as all the seven hawk-gods were thought to have been originally sun-gods, the five Ha-thors as always one and the same goddess, and the five Khnums as having had one and the same origin. Our analysis reveals to us the Hamitic tribes, as the desiccation of the Sahara forced them to seek the more fertile habitation of the Nile valley, slowly through centuries trickling into it, bringing with them the totems they had adopted in the higher land of the steppe, still in some cases continuing to hunt as they had done on the plains, gradually learning fishing and agriculture in the river valley and sometimes adopting new
1	See Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, IV, 108.
2	Urgeschichte, §19.
3	Sethe, ibid., §§66 and 68.
4	See Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, V, 141, and II, 245.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
195
totems from these, multiplying in their new settlements until it was difficult for their territory to support a whole tribe, and then in several cases sending out emigrants to establish other settlements in other parts of the country. We see, too, Semitic clans from Arabia finding their way both into Upper Egypt and the Delta (but particularly the Delta) forcing their way into the land, gaining a permanent foothold, and leaving indelible marks on the religion and language of the land.
In all this we see but little influence of the palm-tree cult of the oases. As noted in the last chapter, the memory that the tree had been sacred survived in art, but, when these settlements occurred, the thought of the Hamites was still sufficiently plastic to enable it to adopt many symbols from its new occupations and environment. During the long centuries which preceded the beginnings of written history in Egypt interest in celestial phenomena was awakened, the center of thought was, to a degree, transferred from the animals to the cosmic objects; the earth and the Nile, the sun and air were deified, and gradually some of the other gods were identified with the sun. In the early dynastic period, too, the gods, which previously had been identified with their totems, began to be conceived as having human forms.1 This anthropomorphism was harmonized with the earlier theriomorphism by conceiving the gods as having the bodies of men but heads of the beasts and birds which had in earlier time been their respective totems. Thus was fixed the conception of each of the important gods which continued to appear in Egyptian art throughout all of the national history. The way was thus prepared for that strange mixture of thought which we find in the Pyramid Texts.
In this period, too, some of the myths must have originated which later played so large a part in Egyptian story. After the settlement of the Semitic clans in the Delta and the coming of Isis and Osiris to Egypt, the myth of the death of Osiris must have caught the fancy of the worshippers of these deities, and at least the kernel of that story, which was later elaborated in so many ways, began to be told.
It is possible, too, that the myth of the struggle between Set and
1 Cf. Steindorff, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 24, and Sethe, Urgeschichte, §§32, 33.196
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Horus had its beginnings in this early period while most of the nomes were independent units. Steindorff thought that it commemorated a war between Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt/ Set being the god of the former and Horus the god of the latter, and that this myth was later, when this war had faded from memory, given the interpretations which afterward became popular. It is, to the mind of the present writer, more probable that it had its beginnings in a war between the tenth and eleventh nomes of Upper Egypt on the west side of the Nile, of which Horus and Set were the respective deities, and which must have had many quarrels with one another of which the story-tellers and bards perpetuated the memory. Since the gradual union of Egypt into two kingdoms was accomplished, as we now know, through the formation of previous kingdoms by gradual conquest, and there seems to be no clear evidence that after Upper Egypt became one kingdom Set was ever regarded as god of the whole, it seems probable that the myth began in the story of an inter-nome war.
Every form of religion has its festivals, and that of early Egypt was no exception. While there is no definite information as to the feasts of prehistoric time, something of their nature may be ascertained from the implications of the feasts of the historic period. In the historic period there was celebrated each year at Thebes the Feast of Opet.1 2 It was observed during the second month of the first season, the month Paophi.3 The feast was the celebration of the marriage of Amen with his consort Mut. During this festival Amen made a journey from Karnak to the temple of Luxor, which bore the name £Harim of Amen.’4 This temple was the headquarters of the musician-priestesses who were designated The concubines’ of Amen.5 The actual high priestess of the shrine was the wife of the king, who bore the title Wife of the God.’6 The picture
1	Steindorff, ibid., p. 30, and Sethe, Urgeschichte, §§47, 51, 53, 92, 93, 129, 131-133, 135, 138.
2	Cf. Breasted, Ancient Records, I, §§40, 42, 545, 573, 583, 585, 630, and II, 171, 233, 239, 240. For the five days preceding the New Year there was also the Feast of Opet; see Breasted, ibid., II, 591, 809, 887, 888, etc.
3	W. Wolf, Das schöne Fest von Opet, 1931, p. 1 ff.
4	Cf. Journal of Egyptian Archeology, VII, 1921, 15.
5	Ibid.
6	Ibid.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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of Amen embracing the queen carved on the walls of the temple of Der el-Bakhri,1 which is repeated on the walls of the temple of Luxor,2 removes all doubt as to the character of the festival. Like the New Year’s festival of the Babylonians at Lagash,3 it celebrated in a realistic way the marriage of a god and goddess. Doubtless, as in Babylonia, these unions were thought by a kind of sympathetic magic, to insure fertility of the soil and a good food supply. The character of this festival is a guarantee of its extreme antiquity.
Another feast, which in the historic period was celebrated all over Egypt, began on the 12th of the month Choiakh, the last month of the first season, and continued throughout the remainder of that month.4 It celebrated the death and resuscitation of Osiris. On the 12th an effigy of Osiris was filled with barley and sand. On the 21st, the barley and sand were replaced by dry myrrh. The effigy was exposed each day for about an hour to the sun. On the 22nd it was sent on a ceremonial voyage on a sacred lake, accompanied by thirty-four divinities in as many boats. The boats were illuminated by 365 candles—one for each day of the Egyptian year. On the 24th at two hours after sunset, the effigy was put in a wooden box and placed in a certain chamber. At the ninth hour of the night the effigy of the previous year was taken from its sepulcher and placed upon sycamore twigs. On the 25th the effigy of the current year was placed in the sepulchral chamber called the ‘House of Sokar.’ On the 30th of the month there occurred ‘the raising of the Dd-post’—the symbol of Osiris—which undoubtedly symbolized the resuscitation of that god. On the first day of the following month the feast of Necheb-Kau, ‘the Union of Kau/ was celebrated. Gardiner has suggested that this latter festival may celebrate the union of all Egypt. He, Sethe, and Hooke all think of the union
1	Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bakari, II, 1897, pis. XLVI ff.
2	A. Gayer, Le Temple de Luxor, 1894, pis. LXIII ff.
3	Cf. RISA, pp. 239 and 251.
4	The festival calendar, which gives the information here stated, is inscribed on the walls of the temple of Denderah. It has been published by V. Loret, Recueil de traveaux, III, 1882, 43 ff.; IV, 1883, 21 ff.; V, 1884, 85 ff.; H. Brugsch, Zeit, für ägyptische Sprache, XIX, 1881, 77ff.; Duemichen, Geographische Inschriften altägyptischer Denkmäler, II, 1866, pis. Iff.; A. Mariette, Denderah, IV, 1873, pls. 35 ff. For discussions, see J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, II, 1914, 86 ff.; A. Gardiner, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, II, 1915, 122 ff.; and A. M. Blackman, in Myth and Ritual, edited by S. H. Hooke, Oxford, 1933, 19 ff.198
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
of Egypt under Mena as the occasion of its origin, but it is possible that it had a still earlier significance,—the union of Kas with their bodies—a kind of all-saints day. However the celebration of this festival may have been employed in historical times to celebrate the kingship, it is clear that its beginnings, like those of the Feast of Opet, go back far into prehistory and originally celebrated the death and resurrection of vegetation.
The celebration of this festival of Choiakh at Memphis in honor of the god Ptah, where it was called the Sed-festival, was accompanied by the recitation of a creation-story.1 As Ptah was a god of craftsmen, doubtless this feature was commemorative of his peculiar function.
On the 1st day of Pashon, the ninth month of the Egyptian year, there was celebrated the feast of Ernutet, mistress of the granary, who was said to have given birth to Nepri, the god of grain.2 In the historical period this festival was kept all over Egypt. Either on this day or at the new moon of the same month, occurred the great harvest festival of Min which is depicted on the Rammaseum3 and the temple of Medinet Habu.4 The king is figuratively represented as reaping spelt for his father Osiris.5 Although adapted to the conditions of the kingship of the historic period, this festival must have begun in remote antiquity and have been coeval with the beginnings of agriculture.
We conclude, then, that the early Egyptians, like the Semites, celebrated two festivals: one at the sowing time, which emphasized fertility in order to secure good crops, and another which celebrated the ingathering of the harvest. Herodotus informs us that many Egyptians traveled in the fifth century to Bubastis to celebrate the feast of the goddess Bast, that they exercised on the way great freedom of manners, and that the festival was celebrated by offering sacrifices and the drinking of much wine.6 As the food promised Pepi in Paradise consisted of ten thousand loaves of bread, ten
1	Cf. A. M. Blackmann in Hooke’s Myth and Ritual, 26 ff. and K. Sethe, Dramatische Texte, 1 ff.
2	Cf. Gardiner, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, II, 125.
3Lepsius, Denkmäler am Aegypten und Aethiopien, III, pls. 162 ff.
4	G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 3rd ed. 1878, pi. LX.
5	Cf. Gardiner, loc. cit.
6	Herodotus, History, II, 60.EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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thousand jugs of beer, ten thousand beeves, and ten thousand geese,1 we may infer that the earliest sacrifices were similar. They were food offered to the gods, of which the worshippers also partook.
Further, it is probable that in the earliest times, if not far down into the historic period, human victims were sometimes consumed at these festivals. The memory of this is perpetuated in a famous passage in the Pyramid Texts, beginning, “King Unis is one who eats men and lives on gods,7,2 and then goes on to describe how they are cooked for him.3 It is not necessary to suppose that cannibalism had survived to the time of Unis at the end of the Vth dynasty, but the figures employed would have been shocking or meaningless to a people to whom cannibalism had been always unknown. Moreover archaeological evidence of such practices have, I believe, been found.4 The excavators attribute the state in which they found certain bones to “ritual dismemberment.” It seems in reality to be a euphemism for an uglier word.
Such, in broad outline, were the beginnings of Egypt’s racial mixture and social and religious life. It is not the purpose of this book to trace its later history. That has already been done by those more competent than the present writer to deal with the manifold intricacies of the later historical development.
1	Sethe, Pyramidentexte, §2027.
2	Sethe, Pyramidentexte, §400 ff.
3	For a translation of the whole passage, see Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought, 127-129. For a comment on its significance, see the writer’s article in JBL, XLIX, 13-19.
4	Cf. W. F. M. Petrie and J. E. Quibel, Naqada and Balas, London, 1896, p. 32, and Petrie, Wainwright, and Mackay, The Labyrinth, Girzeh and Mazghuneh, London, 1912, pp. 8-15.VII
SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
IF THE results of our investigations embodied in previous chapters are valid, we have already learned much of Arabian religious origins. Arabia was the cradle-land of the Semites, and in its deserts and oases a Semitic population was developed whose economic life centered in the culture of the palm tree, and who regarded water as the spermatazoa of the spirits which dwelt in springs. Here was the birthplace of those tree-deities which passed under the various forms which the word athir assumed in passing to other Semitic lands and to Egypt, and here there also developed that class of water-deities of fertility which, called by the various forms which the epithet athtar assumed in different Semitic dialects, passed to all Semitic lands. It remains now to inquire whether it is possible to trace the connection between the facts which seem thus to be established for the Arabia of pre-Babylonian and pre-Egyptian times and Arabian heathenism as it is known to us from later historical sources. Unfortunately between the far-off time of Semitic beginnings in which the deities just referred to developed and the earliest of the historical sources from Arabia there is a gap of 2000 to 3000 years. Of the thousands of inscriptions gathered from South Arabia by Osiander, Halevy, Glaser, and others, the great majority come from South Arabia, which we concluded was the Semitic cradle-land.
This part of Arabia is of volcanic formation, consisting of extensive uplands, broken by mountain ranges and interspersed with valleys of surpassing richness, where from time immemorial the land has been laid out in terraces, the water of the rainy season stored in cisterns for irrigation, and many natural rivulets course down the hills.1 These valleys produce wheat, barley, maize, millet, and coffee, as well as palm trees, orange, lemon, quince, mango, plum,
1 Cf. Reclus, The Earth and its Inhabitants, New York, 1885, IV, 438 ff. and Zwem-wer, Arabia, the Cradle of Islam, chs. V and VI.
200SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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apricot, peach, apple, pomegranate, and fig trees. The palm flourished especially.1 The vine also grows there luxuriantly.2 This is the Arabia Felix of the ancients. Here a Semitic kingdom had been established, probably as early as 1250 years before the Christian era, and perhaps earlier. The claims of Glaser and Hommel that a Minaean kingdom preceded the Sabaean on this soil seem to me to be well made out. The Minaean sarcophagus of the Ptolemaic period, discovered some years since in Egypt3 is no objection to this; it only shows that the city of Ma'in kept its identity some time after it was dominated by the Sabaean power. Tradition has it that a queen of Sabaea visited Solomon,4 and Sargon, king of Assyria, counted It'amara (Jetha‘-amara), king of Sabaea, among his tribute-payers in the year 715 B.C.5 In the rich valleys of southwestern Arabia agricultural communities must have been formed at a very early time. Semitic social life would therefore reach a civilized level here far sooner than in other parts of Arabia. Reclus declares6 that in this mountainous region the very soil and climate render a nomadic life almost impossible. There are vast uplands between the mountains and valleys where the Bedu have settled into a pastoral life.7
In this part of Arabia three distinct tribes can be traced, each with its city or center, and each with its peculiar pantheon of gods. They are Main, Saba, and Qataban. It has been made clear in previous chapters that this part of Arabia was never as isolated as was Central and North Arabia. It was the highway, from the remotest times, between Egypt on the one hand and Mesopotamia and Elam on the other. One should therefore be prepared to discover that during the silent millennia when our sources afford us no
1	For picture of a bronze tablet decorated with palm trees cf. Nielsen Altarabische Mond Religion, p. 115.
2	Zwemer, op. cit., p. 57.
3	Cf. Golenischeff, in the St. Petersburg Sapiski, 1893, p. 219 ff.; D. H. Müller, in Wiener Zeitschrift f. d. Kunde des Morganlandes, 1894, p. 1 ff.; Hommel, PSBA., XVI, 145 ff.; Derenbourg, in Jour, asiatique, 1894; and Weber, Mitteilungen vorderasiat. Gesellschaft, 1901, Geft I, 42.
41 Kgs. 10:1 ff.
5	Cf. KB., II, 54, 55; and Glaser, Die Abessinier in Arabia und Afrika, p. 29.
6	Op. cit., p. 438.
7	Zwemer, op. cit., p. 68.202
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
information concerning this region, foreign civilizations were slowly leaving some impress upon its people.
For the heathenism of North Arabia we have three sources of information: theophorous proper names, tradition, and the Coran. These sources were explored by Wellhausen and his results published in his masterly treatise, Reste arabische Heidentums (2nd ed. Berlin and Leipzig, 1927), who did his work so thoroughly that no real advance beyond him has since been made. From all these sources the names of more than 100 Arabian deities have been recovered.1 An analysis of a large number, of these names reveals the fact that they are simply epithets which conceal the real name of the deity. Such are the names beginning with dhu, (fern, dhat), meaning ‘of of ‘belonging to’ such and such a shrine or place. The phrase is the equivalent of ba'al, ‘lord/ ‘owner/ ‘possessor7 of such and such a shrine or such and such a place. As Rhodokanakis and Nielsen have rightly said, we do not know how to vocalize many of these names, as the inscriptions give them to us only in a consonantal spelling. In the judgment of the writer, however, this makes little difference, for, as Fell has shown,2 they are simply epithets and they doubtless often conceal the name of a deity which we should recognize, if referred to by his real name. Some of these epithets will be dealt with a little later.
The view of the origin of the gods of Arabia here set forth is opposed by the radically different view of Dr. Ditlef Nielsen set forth in his treatment of the subject in that portion of his Handbuch der altarabischen Altertumskunde, Band I, Kopenhagen, 1927, which treats of the religion. Nielsen taken his starting-point from what he rightly conceives to be the incontestable fact that Shams was among the Arabs a sun-goddess, and a mother-goddess. With her he associates Sin, the moon-god, whom he believes to be the chief deity all over Arabia, and who, where worshipped, is conceived as a father. In Athtar, who among the Arabs was identified with the planet Venus and was regarded as masculine, he finds a third celestial deity whom he believes the Arabs thought to be the son of Sin and Shams. From these three deities he derives by means of epi-
1	Cf. D. Nielsen, Handbuch der altarabische Altertumskunde, Bd I, Kopenhagen, 1927, p. 188.
2	ZDMG, Vol. 54, 1900, pp. 231-259.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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thets many of the other important deities of the land, as Wadd, whom he regards as the moon-god under another name, Al-Uzza and Al-Lat, who are taken to be different names for the sun-goddess.
In the judgment of the present writer this theory is radically defective. It supposes that men deified far-off celestial bodies before they deified the spirits of nearby springs and trees on the earth. Animals are strongly attracted by the movements of things about them, but do not gaze at the sun and moon in contemplation or, so far as we know, possess theories about them. If human progress has been from the psychological standpoint of an animal to the higher level of the present human average, we should expect the earliest men to have regarded themselves as capable of entering into relations with the spirits of trees, springs, and rocks before they came to regard the far-off celestial bodies as having any important influence over them. Those writers are, therefore, we believe, correct, who regard chthonic gods as earlier in origin than celestial gods. For this reason the theory of Nielsen must, we believe, be rejected. Athtar was not a personification of the planet Venus who afterward became a god of fertility, but the spirit of a spring who was afterward identified with the planet. Shams was not the personified sun who was later identified with an earth-goddess, but an earth-goddess who was later identified with the sun.
As pointed out in the last chapter, the religion of Egypt began with chthonic animal deities, who were later given human forms. Some of these were at different times identified with the sun. Breasted1 has shown how in Egypt, through the identification of Osiris, an earth-god, with the sun, the conception of the dwelling place of the departed was gradually transferred from the underworld to a celestial heaven. This development in Egypt occured between the far-off ages of beginnings which we have been trying to reconstruct and the period at which our Arabian sources began to be written. A study of the progress of thought in Babylonia will reveal a similar development during this same period. Even if the mental and cultural development of the Arabs did not keep pace with that of their neighbors who were so fortunate as to live in fertile river valleys, it evidently did not fail to progress along the same pathway from earth to sky. This was all the easier since the highway of com-
1 The Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, New York. 1912.204
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
merce between these river valleys lay across the very desert wastes in which the Arabs lived. Analogy, therefore, of every sort leads us to follow a method the opposite of Nielsen’s.
In doing this we shall not attempt to account for the names of all the scores of Arabian gods, the pronunciation of many of which are unknown, but shall content ourselves with the examination of some of the more important and common deities of each section of the land, with a view of discovering possible connections with the remote past. We begin with Ma'in, from which our oldest written sources come.
However many divine names may appear in the Minaean inscriptions, there is one triad which appears again and again, always in the same order. It is Athtar, Wadd, and Nakrakh.1 This triad is so ancient that it appears unchanged in all Minaean texts.2 The Minaeans surged northward and left their indelible impress in North Arabia. This is reflected in the Thamudic inscriptions in which the names of this Minaean triad constantly occur.3 Nielsen, who identifies Wadd with Sin, the moon-god, asserts that in this triad Wadd is the chief deity.4 The name Wadd means love/ or lover/ and as Sin is sometimes called ah, or lather/ Nielsen appears to regard the name as having been bestowed as a token of a father’s love. Whatever view the Minaeans may have held of Wadd at the time their inscriptions were written—even if then they did regard Wadd as their father and themselves as the ‘sons of Wadd’5—the fact that Athtar always holds the chief place in the triad, being mentioned first, points back to a time when Athtar was the chief divinity, and Wadd was clearly secondary to him. Moreover the Athtar who was thus worshipped was not the star Venus, but the god of date-palm irrigation and of the harvest. Fell has shown6 that PtOJDfiO, ‘gatherer of the harvest/ £33pDJlD, ‘the waterer/
1See, e.g., Hal. 255, and Eut. 22 (e.g. in Hommel’s Chrestomathie) and Gl. 1150 in Rhodokanakis, Studien zur Lexikographie und Grammatik des AUsudarabischen, Wien, II, 1917, p. 54.
2	Cf. Nielsen, op. cit., p. 188.
3	Nielsen, ibid.
4	Op. cit., p. 42.
5	Nielsen, op. cit. p. 217. The inference is based on the phrase alwad Wadd, in Eut. 57.
6	ZDMG, 54, 1900, pp. 233-238.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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epithets which occur in various inscriptions, were really epithets of Athtar. These epithets ascribe to Athtar functions which, upon other grounds, we were led in Chapter V to ascribe to him. He was the water-god in the earliest religion—the god who fructified the soil—the god who made the date-crop and other crops possible— the god on whose activity the life of the community depended. Naturally he stood at the head of the pantheon. His identification with the planet Venus must have come much later, and was probably due to Babylonian influence. In that land his female counterpart, Ashdar (Ishtar) was identified with that planet before 2000 B.C. From a much earlier time influences from that land were surging across Arabia to Egypt. We believe that kinship of name led to the identification of the Arabic deity with the planet sacred to his kindred goddess of the more fertile land. There is nothing in the planet Venus or in myths connected with her to lead any people to regard a god that originated in a deification of her as The waterer5 or The gatherer of harvest/ or indeed to place her at the head of its pantheon. On the other hand there is every reason why the inhabitants of a desert oasis should apply such epithets to the god of their spring and to place him first in their list of deities. The first god of the Minasan pantheon, therefore—the oldest pantheon revealed in Arabian literary remains—connects directly and conclusively with the early prehistoric deity whose existence we postulated above.
As to Wadd, the second member of the triad, Hommel, Winckler, and Nielsen have conjectured that the name, which means dove’ or lover5 or loving one/ was an epithet of the moon god Shahar or Sin.1 Even if this were so in later time, it can hardly have been primitive. The worship of the moon-god, like that of the sun and Venus, came in comparatively late. The view that I expressed thirty years ago,2 that Wadd was an offshoot of Athtar, the epithet becoming so personified that it came to be regarded as a distinct deity, is still possible. Wadd might also be an epithet of the son of the tree-goddess, Athirat. It is quite possible that in the period from which the inscriptions come he had been identified with the moon, but this could hardly be his earliest form.
1	Cf. Hommel, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, II, München, 1900, p. 155ff. Winckler, ‘‘ Arabisch-Semitisch-Orientalisch” in Mitteil. d. Vorderasiat. Gesell., 1901, Heft 4-5, p. 83 (233) ff., and Nielsen, op. eit., pp. 42, 196, and 224i
2	Semitic Origins, p. 131.206
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
The name and character of the third member of the triad are both obscure. The name is clearly a niphal formation from the root KRH,1 but, so far as appears, no such verbal root is known either in Semitic or Egyptian. Nielsen, who takes Wadd for a moon-god, conjectures that Nakrakh was the Minaean name for the sun-god-dess,2 but Hommel regards Nakrakh as a war-god.3 It is better to confess our ignorance, since evidence is altogether lacking. It should be observed, however, that, even if Nielsen’s conception of Wadd and Nakrakh should turn out to be right, it would only confirm the conclusions we have reached that the chthonic deities were far older than the celestial gods, for Athtar in this triad always precedes Wadd and Nakrakh.
Another possibility, however, deserves serious consideration. In an inscription published by Hommel,4 Athirat, the Arabian equivalent of the North Semitic goddess Asherah, appears as the consort of the Minaean god Wadd. In a previous chapter5 we have shown this goddess to have been older than Athtar himself. The survival of her name in this inscription makes it probable that Nakrakh was originally an epithet of hers, and that in Nakrakh we have a survival of that age-old goddess who appeared in Egypt as Isis.
The chief deity of the Sabseans bore the name flpDpK, of which we know neither the vocalization or the meaning.6 Nielsen vocalizes it three different ways in the same book without betraying any consciousness of inconsistency.7 Vocalized as Almaq-hu, it could be a causative of the stem LMQ, meaning ‘He slaps him’ or ‘He looks at him’ or ‘He blots him out’—meanings quite unsuited to the character of a god. Vocalized Al-maqqahu, it could mean ‘The one who makes to recover’ or ‘gives back health,’ from MQH, vocalized Il-maqqahu, it could mean ‘The health-giving god,’
1	Cf. Hommel, Südarabische Chrestomathie, München, 1893, p. 21.
2	Op. eit., p. 224.
3	Chrestomathie, p. 134.
4	Aufsätze und Abhandlungeny II, 206 ff.
5	Chapter V, see p. 134.
6	The name is more often vocalized as Almakah; so Rhodokanakis, in his Studien. The Corpus, however, makes it Ilmakkah.
7	Cf. Nielsen, op. cit., e.g., pp. 12, 77, and 120. The inconsistency runs through his book.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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from the same root. The first of these etymologies is certainly unsatisfactory; the second or third is possible, but not certain. This deity, whose name in the earlier documents occurs along with those of Athtar and Shams,1 is mentioned more often in the inscriptions hitherto recovered than any other deity. His temples were larger than those of any other god. His name occurs more than a thousand times over a period of a thousand years, and finally he seems to have displaced even Athtar, who ceases to be mentioned with him.2 Nielsen, who holds that the moon-god was the chief god of Arabia, naturally regards him as that deity under another name. The occurrence of his name along with that of the sun-goddess Shams lends plausibility to this view. That he is a younger deity than Athtar3 is, we believe, made evident by the antiquity which we have established for Athtar and the relatively later period at which the worship of celestial bodies was introduced. It should be noted, however that, even if Al-maqqahu were a moon-god, as it is certain that Shams was a sun-goddess, this does not necessarily explain the ultimate origin of the deities of the Sabaean triad. It is rare indeed in the history of religion that new gods are adopted at once by any people. As a rule the new deity is believed to be the old god under another name; he is called by both names for a time until at last the new name displaces the old. An example of this is afforded by the history of Atum-Re, the deity of the Egyptian nome of On (Heliopolis) recounted in the last chapter. A vegetation-god was identified with the sun-god, for a time was called by the vegetation-name or the sun name indifferently, or by both, until at last the sun-name prevailed. If the entire history of the three most popular deities of Saba lay before us, we believe that we should have the record of a similar transformation—the change of water- or vegetation-deities into deities of the two great orbs of the sky, and that it would appear that the triad of Saba originated in beginnings analogous to those of the triad of Main. Indeed, analogy with the triad of Main takes us a step further and leads irresistibly to the conjecture that
1	Cf. CIS, Pars IV, Tom. I, no. 74.
2	Nielsen, op. cit., p. 182.
3	Mordtmann conjectured that Athtar, Al-maqqahu, and Shams constituted a triad among the Sabseans, similar to Athtar, Wadd, and Nakrakh among the Minaeans. See Nielsen, op. cit., 199.208
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
back of the goddess Shams of the Sabaean triad, there stood the primitive Semitic goddess Athirat, of which both the North Semitic goddess Asherah and the Egyptian Isis were later developments.
The history of Qataban, which lay nearer to the southern coast of Arabia than did Saba, was synchronous with the earlier portion of Sabaean history.1 Among the Qatabanians the god ‘Amm held a position analogous to that held among the Minaeans by Wadd, and among the Sabaeans by Al-maqqahu. The Minaeans are said to be children of Wadd; the Sabaeans of Al-maqqahu; the Qatabanians, of 'Amm. Each shrine had its 'Amm. There was an 'Amm of Yasir and an 'Amm of Shaqir.2 The name 'Amm is derived from the root "amm, which means ‘be common to all/ ‘become a paternal uncle/ and, as a noun, ‘father’s brother/ ‘paternal uncle/ and ‘father-in-law.’ In Hebrew the noun also means ‘father’s brother/ ‘paternal uncle/ and then ‘a great multitude/ and ‘people.’ In both languages a preposition meaning ‘with’ is derived from it. Just why it was given as a name to the Qatabanian god we do not know. It was, however, a South Arabian god centuries before our Qatabanian inscriptions were written, for it was carried by the Amorites to Babylonia and Palestine toward the end of the third millennium before Christ.3 Although 'Amm was the patron god of the Qatabanians, like the Minaean god Wadd, he held second place in their pantheon. Athtar was mentioned before him. Thus in a noteworthy agricultural inscription published by Rhodokanakis, the deities whose aid is acknowledged are Athtar Sharqan, 'Amm of Dun, Nusur (the eagles), the god Fakhr, or Al-Fakhr, or possibly 'the glorious god/ (meaning the moon-god?), and Shams or the sun-goddess.4 If Nusur, which is here plurul as Rhodokanakis perceived,5 means the eagles, we have a possible trace of totemism. Nielsen contends6 that 'Amm is a moon-god. He gives no reason for his view that is convincing. In the pantheon just quoted it
1	Katabanische Texte zur Bodenwirtschaft, II, Sitzungsberichte d. Akad. d. Wiss. in Wien’ 198 Bd. 2 (1922), p. 28 f.
2	Cf. Nielsen, Neue Katabanische Inschriften (MVAG, 1906, Heft, 4), p. 274, line 5 f.
3	See above, Ch. Ill, p. 72.
4	Athtar is mentioned first in other inscriptions; cf. Nielsen, op. cit., pp. 249, 263,
274, and 281.
6 Op. cit., p. 29.
6 Op. cit., 224.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
209
would seem that Al-Fakhr, who is mentioned just before the sun-goddess, and so was probably her consort, might well be the moon-god. *Amm, one would conjecture, was more likely the spirit of the male date palm, or an epithet originally of Athtar himself. In any case the name of Athtar at the head of the pantheon attests that the Qatabanian pantheon, like the Minaean, was originally a chthonic and agricultural pantheon, and that it is an outgowth of the religion that originated in primitive Semitic times.
In certain other Qatabanian inscriptions but two deities are invoked, 'Amm and Athirat.1 It would appear, therefore, that the real consort of 'Amm, as of Wadd among the Minaeans, was the old tree-goddess, from whom Asherah and Isis had both sprung. Sometimes other deities are mentioned. Among these are Anbai2 (possibly meaning ‘prophets/ perhaps beings analogous to the Mohammedan Welis) and Hukm, ‘the wise’ or ‘instructed one/3 This last name is clearly an epithet. More important than these is the fact that the Qatabanians possessed a triad which consisted of Athtar, 'Amm, and Shams.4 The occurrence of Shams as the consort of "Amm, in place of Athirat, confirms our conjecture that Shams was a deity that came into the pantheon later than the chthonic goddess and resulted in a gradual identification of the tree-goddess with the sun. The occurrence of this equivalence makes it probable that originally the triads of Ma'in, Saba, and Qataban were identical, and that they were differentiated from one another by the use of different epithets.
It is not the purpose of the present work to give a complete picture of ancient Arabian religious life, even if our command of the sources were such as to make this possible. Our purpose is rather to establish the historical connection between primitive Semitic religion and the pantheon of later Arabian religion. This has, for South Arabia, been accomplished in the preceding pages. We cannot, however, turn from this part of the peninsula without calling
1	Cf. Rhodokanakis, Katabanische Texte, I (Sitzungsberichte der Akadamie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Phil.-hist. Klasse, Band, 194 (1919), pp. 58 and 122).
2	Nielsen, Neue katabanische Inschriften, p. 274 (Gl. 1119), 1.5.
z Ibid., 1.6. As hakim means ‘physician’ in northern Arabic, it is possible that Hukm was originally the same healing god as Al-maqqahu, though known among the Qatabanians by another epithet.
4 Ibid., p. 263 (Gl. 1402), 1.2.210
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
attention to the importance of an inscription published some years ago by the Derenbourgs.1 It reads as follows:
1.	Yasbakh of Riyam, son of Mauqis and Baus, and his wife
Karibat of M. ..
2.	of the tribe Sirwakh, a royal vassal, have consecrated to their
lady, ’Umm-Athtar for
3.	four sons four images of pure gold, because ’Umm-Athtar
blessed
4.	them with the boys and three daughters and they lived—all
these chil-
5.	dren—and they two themselves have acquired gain through
these children. May ’Umm-
6.	Athtar continue to bless his servants, Yasbakh and Karibat
with well-formed children, and to favor them
7.	themselves, and to favor their children. May ’Umm-Athtar
be gracious
8.	and grant complete safety to the sons of Yasbakh: Kharif,
Magda'al, Ra-
9.	balat, and Am'atiq, descendants of Mauqis, and to their
harvests and good fruits in
10.	the land Nakhla Kharif,2 and in the pastures of their camels.
To ’Umm-Athtar.
The remarkable feature of this inscription is that it reveals that even in South Arabia Athtar was not always a masculine deity. ’Umm-Athtar, i.e., ‘Mother-Athtari is a goddess—the goddess of childbirth, or the giver of children. The authors of this inscription considered themselves indebted to her for their seven children, and implored her blessing on their palm-tree orchards and camel pastures. ’Umm-Athtar was thus the goddess of vegetation as well as of human fecundity. She fulfils exactly the functions believed to be performed by the Ishtars and Ashtarts of the Northern Semites. It thus appears that Athtar was not always masculine, even in Arabia, and that the feminine character in which this deity appears among the North Semitic peoples had its roots in South Arabia itself. How this came about, we can now only conjecture. Thirty years ago the writer believed it to be due to a change in
1	Journal Asiatique, 8 ser., Tom. II, 256-266.
2	7. e.y ‘Palm-tree irrigation-canals.’SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
211
Arabia from a matrilinear to a patrilinear type of society.1 That explanation does not now seem satisfactory in view of uncertainty as to the origin of the Semitic matrilinear sib. It is possible that from the beginning there were thought to be both male and female springs or spirits of springs, though in view of the masculine character of water, this at first seems doubtful. It is to be recalled, however, that in the Babylonian Epic the whole process of creative activity was begun by the embosoming of male and female types of water.2 Masculine and feminine Athtars may, accordingly, have existed in Arabia from the beginning. Another possibility is that the name Athtar has here been applied to the primitive tree-goddess, Athirat. While this is possible, in view of the Babylonian parallel, it is more probable that from the beginning there were feminine Athtars as well as masculine and that in this inscription one of them has survived.
In the past it has been customary to assume that the ancestors of the Northern Semites must, before their migration from Arabia, have lived for some time apart from the ancestors of the Southern Semites, and the North Semitic cradle-land has been sought in the Nejd or some other part of North Arabia. The reasons adduced have been the absence of ‘broken’ or ‘inner’ plurals from North Semitic, and the feminine character of their Ishtar-deities. It now turns out that neither of these arguments is convincing. North Semitic employs feminine collectives which are equivalent to ‘broken’ plurals, and their feminine Ishtars have a parallel in South Arabia. The conclusion seems warranted, therefore, that the Northern Semites, like the Southern are the offspring of South Arabia.
From El-'Ula and its vicinity in North Arabia between Maan and Medina about four hundred fragmentary inscriptions have been recovered.3 Few of these were found in their original positions, but had been used as building materials in house and garden walls.
1	Semitic Origins, p. 125 ff.
2	See any of the many translations of the epic; e.g., the writer’s Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 287.
3	Cf. J. H. Mordtmann, Beiträge zur Minaischen Epigraphik, Weimar, 1897; D. H. Müller, Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Arabia, Wien, 1889; Jaussen et Savignac, Mission scientifique en Arabie, Paris, 1914, and Nielsen, op. cit., pp. 42-44.212
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Practically all of them are fragmentary. They are written in a modified form of the South Arabian script, but in the dialect of North Arabia. They reveal the existence here of a kingdom of Likhyan. Opinions differ as to the date of these documents. Some would place them in the fifth or sixth pre-Christian century; others regard them as post-Christian. All, however, agree that they were written before the time of Mohammed. Fragmentary as these documents are, they inform us that the Likhyanians worshipped a god II or Ilah, and a goddess Ilat or Ilahat; also the gods Wadd, Sami', and Nasr, and the goddess Manat. Of these deities Wadd, Sama', and Nasr are divine names familiar to the student of the South Arabian inscriptions. With Wadd and Nasr we have already met, though the Qatabanian Nasr was plural, but Sama', 'The Hearer/ occurs also as a divine epithet several times in South Arabian documents.1 These divine names, together with the use of the South Arabian script in the Likhyanian texts, give evidence of a migration of a South Arabian colony from the region of Ma'in to this oasis. The names II and Hat (or Ilah and Ilahat), which were employed by the Likhyanians, appear in South Arabian documents also.2 Ilah, meaning 'The god’ and Ilahat, 'The goddess’ were employed in both the South and the North as epithets of the chief god and the chief goddess. The terms do not imply monotheism when found in pre-Mohammedan documents, nor do they inform us what deity was thus exalted. The chief god of the Likhyanians was Dhu-Gabat, or Dhu-Gibt, 'Possessor of magic’ or possibly, 'Owner of the idol.’ It was an epithet which concealed his original name. One would conjecture that that name was Athtar, but that cannot be proven.
The Thamudic graffiti, as the scratchings on the rocks of Central and Northern Arabia are called, are post-Christian, but pre-Mohammedan. They were clearly made by a heathen people in a script that is an offshoot of that of South Arabia.3 They contain personal
1	See Nielsen, op. cit., p. 248, n. 5, for references to the individual inscriptions which contain it.
2	Cf. Nielsen, op. cit., pp. 190, 192, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, 228, 248, 249.
3	Cf. J. Halevy, Nouvel essai sur les inscriptions proto-arabes, Paris, 1903; Enno Littmann, “Zur Entzifferung der thamudenischen Inschriften’ ’ in Mitteilungen der vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, 1904, 1; M. Lidsbarski, “Altnordarabisch” in Ephemeris der semitische Epigraphik, II, 1908, pp. 23-48,345-362; and J. J. Hess, Der Entzifferung der thamudischen Inschriften, Paris, 1911; also the remarks of Nielsen, op. cit., pp. 44-46.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
213
and divine names. The divine names most often mentioned are Ilah, Ilahat, Nahi, and Rudha. Of the two former enough has already been said. Rudha, which means ‘Grace’ or ‘Favor/ or ‘The gracious one/ and is found more than fifty times/ is clearly an epithet for some deity, though at present we can only guess which one. It is, to the mind of the present writer, intrinsically probable that Rudha is another name for an Athtar or an Athirat, but that cannot be proved from our present scanty sources. Nahi, which, perhaps, means ‘The prudent one’ or ‘The intelligent one/ was even more popular since the name occurs between fifty and a hundred times. The name is an epithet that has superseded the original name of an older deity.
In the Safaite inscriptions2 which have been found in the Safa Mountains southeast of Damascus, some of which bear such dates as 106, 124, and 206 A.D., the divine names Ilah, Ilahat and Rudha are also the most common. These inscriptions accordingly unite their testimony to that of the Thamudic documents as to the popularity of these deities in pre-Islamic North Arabia. The name of Rudha was known to a number of Islamic writers,3 who testify that the name was applied both to an idol and a temple. The Nahi of the inscriptions (possibly to be read Nuhi) is perhaps identical with the deity Nuhm,4 concerning whom some information can be gleaned from Islamic writers. Not much knowledge is thus revealed beyond the fact that sacrifices were offered to him.
Evidence of the existence of other pre-Mohammedan gods in different parts of Arabia has been gleaned by Wellhausen. There was Dhu-l-Khalasa, a white stone surmounted by a kind of crown which stood in Tabala, seven days south of Mecca.5 Some kind of temple accompanied the idol, and an oracle was connected with it. The name was clearly an appellative and described the deity as the possessor of some fragrant, abundantly growing vegetation.6 Wellhausen recognized that the name is an appellative which conceals the real name of the deity.7 It is, however, an appellative which
1	Cf. Nielsen, op. cit., 215, n.
2	Cf. Nielsen, op. cit., p. 46 f.; for publication of inscriptions, ibid. n. 1.
3	See Wellhausen, Reste arabische Heitentums, p. 58 f.
4	Cf. Wellhausen, op. cit., p. 57 f.
5	Wellhausen, ibid., p. 45 f.
6	Wellhausen, op. cit.,. p. 47.
7	Ibid.214
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
describes the character of a vegetation-god—a fact which leads one to think that the original deity of the spot was connected either with the Athtar of the Athirat group of divinities.
Another deity was Dhu-’l-Shara,1 the Dusares of Greek writers. The meaning of the word Shara is uncertain. Three places are known to have borne the name. One of these was near the Euphrates, another was in the district of the Taiyi tribe, while the third was a mountain in the neighborhood of Arafa.2 The god is known to have been worshipped at Petra by the Nabathaeans;3 there was a splendid temple to him and a stone pillar (Arab nosb, Hebrew Massebah) on which the fat of sacrifices was smeared. Epiphanius states4 that with him an unmarried goddess was worshipped, that the goddess was regarded as his mother, and that comparison of them was made with Jesus and the Virgin Mary. The view taken in Semitic Origins,5 that in Dhu-l-Shara and his mother we have a survival of the primitive Semitic vegetation-goddess and her son, still seems to be fully justified. The pair were a North Arabian Ishtar and Tammuz, or Isis and Osiris.
Another pre-Islamic deity was Al-Fals,6 who was identified with a red projection in the midst of Mount Aga. The Banu Baulanwere his priests. If stolen camels escaped from their captors and strayed to his territory, the robbers abandoned them. The sanctuary of Al-Fals is said to have been destroyed by Ali.
Another god of this period was Al-Galsad,7 whose name, like that of Al-Fals, is concealed under an appellative. He is said to have been worshipped by the Kinda and in Hadramaut. His sacred enclosure was extensive and on it pastured his herds. If the herds of others wandered into it, they became forfeit from their owners. He was clearly a pastoral deity, kindred to Athtar.
Of Manaf it is only known that he was the patron god of one of the sibs of the Quraish.8 The meaning of his name is enigmatic.
1	Wellhausen, ibid., p. 48 ff.
2	Ibid., p. 51.
3	CIS, Pt. II, no. 198.
4	Panarion, LI. Cf. the material and comments in Hebraica, X, 61, and W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., p. 56 n.
5	P. 233 f.
6	Wellhausen, op. cit., p. 51 if.
7	Wellhausen, ibid., p. 53 if.
8	Wellhausen, op. cit., p. 56 f.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
215
Of Al-Muharriq it is known that his name was an appellative and that every sib of the tribe of Rabi sacrificed a son to him;1 of Sa'd, whose name means ‘Luck’ or ‘Lucky one/ or ‘Luck-giver/2 that he was a tall block of stone in an extensive waste, and that his name was also given to the planet Jupiter.3 His name is an epithet like that of Wadd, but which of the older names it superseded we cannot now divine. As in South Arabia, Shams was a goddess,4 and was served by a number of the tribes of Northern and Central Arabia, including the Quraish. Among the Banu Tamim there was an idol of Shams, and the Banu Udd served her in a temple. Su'air or Al-Sa'ir, ‘The firebrand/ was a deity of whom there was an idol among the 'Anaza. Not much concerning him has survived. Another deity, the name of which was concealed by an epithet, was Al-Uqaisir, at whose sanctuary and holy stones the Arabs used to shave their heads, offering the hair and lice with meal in sacrifice.5
To these deities of pre-Islamic days, there should be added those which Mohammed in Sura 71:22,23 claimed that the contemporaries of Noah worshipped. They were Wadd, Suwa', Yaghuth, Ya'uq, and Nasr. Several of these appear to have been gods of the South Arabians. Wadd was, as we have seen, the patron deity of the Minaeans. Suwa' is said to have been worshipped in Ruhat, in the territory of Yanbu' near Medina.6 Yaghuth is said to have been worshipped under the form of a lion at Jorash, a town of northern Yemen, at the head of Wady Bisha.7 At Mecca there appears to have been a shrine to him, and some of the Quraish bore theophorous names in which Yaghuth was the divine element.8 This is not strange, since shrines of the gods of the various tribes which frequented the Meccan fairs appear to have been maintained in that city. The name Yaghuth is an epithet, meaning ‘Helper/9 and conceals his real name. The association of the lion with him
1	Ibid.., p. 57. Cf. also W. R. Smith, op. cit., p. 364, n. 1.
2	Cf. Nielsen, op. cit., pp. 192, 196, 233, 234.
3	Wellhausen, op. cit., p. 59 f.
*Ibid., p. 60 f.
5	Ibid., p. 62.
6	Ibid., p. 18.
7	W. R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 2nd ed. p. 224 f.; cf. also Wellhausen, op. cit., p. 19 ff.
8	W. R. Smith, loc. cit.
9	Wellhausen, op. cit., p. 22.216
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
is evidence that the epithet conceals the name of a very early deity, perhaps a god of Hamitic origin. Ya'uq was the name of an idol of the Hamdan and Khulan in Arhab.1 His idol is said to have been in the form of a horse.2 Apparently, therefore, the horse was sacred to him, but, as the horse was not known to primitive Semites or Hamites, W. R. Smith is doubtless right in interpreting its presence here to Persian influence, transmitted by way of the island of Bahrain. The worship appears to have belonged to South Arabia, since Halévy found the hill in front of the town of Ghayman called Gebel Ya'uq.3 If the cult came in through the Persian Gulf one would expect it to reach Central Arabia via the southern portion of the peninsula. Nasr, the 'Eagle5 or 'Vulture/ we have already met in the Qatabanian inscriptions. The North Arabian tradition knew Nasr as a god of the Himyarites which was said to have the figure of an eagle or vulture.4 Wellhausen, recalling that in Sabaean inscriptions “the eastern and western Nasr55 is mentioned, thinks of
“die beiden Adler”6--------constellations which are near the Milky Way,
thus making Nasr a celestial deity. If, during the period when the Arabs connected their deities with celestial bodies such an identification was made (which seems to the writer improbable), it certainly was not the primitive form of the god. It is more probable that in these Nasrs we have a sporadic survival of that totemism which characterized the Hamites, and which we have traced in a majority of the nomes of Egypt. "The eastern and western Eagle” recalls the names of the seventh and eighth nomes of Lower Egypt, which bore the same name, being distinguished from each other by the adjectives 'east5 and 'west.5 It will be recalled that three other pairs of Egyptian nomes bore identical names, being distinguished by the adjectives, 'first and 'last5 (or 'second5).6 We accordingly see in Nasr, or the Nasur, one of the oldest Arabian gods— a god whose worship survived nearly down to the time of the prophet.
1	Wellhausen, ibid.
2	W. R. Smith, op. cit.f p. 242 f.
3	Halévy, Voyage au Nejrant p. 31.
4	W. R. Smith, op. cit.j p. 245 f.
5	Op. cit.f p. 23.
6	The first pair were the thirteenth and fourteenth nomes of Upper Egypt; the second, the twentieth and twenty first; the third, the eighteenth and nineteenth nomes of Lower Egypt. For details, see above, Ch. VI, pp. 178f, 181f and 192f.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
217
It is time that we turned to the gods of Mecca. Two deities appear in pre-Islamic times to have been worshipped at the Kaaba, Al-Uzza and Hubal. These the Meccans invoked at the battle of Ohod.1 These deities were represented by two stones in the Kaaba, a white stone and a black stone. There is much evidence that Al-Uzza was a mother-goddess and Hubal was her son. The goddess was apparently identified with the white stone, which is still in the Kaaba, and her son with the black stone.2 The Kaaba was the shrine of these deities; the Zemzem was a well sacred to them,3 and the Ghabghab the place where their sacrifices were slain.4 In the Zemzem golden gazelles were once found, and the finder placed them in the Kaaba.5 The goddess is said to have had another shrine at a point called Nakhla, or ‘Palm.’6 The star Venus was sacred to her, and the Quraish held a feast to her every year.7 Christian writers testify that her feasts were accompanied by lewd practices.8 Doves (pigeons) were sacred to her, and are still protected in the Kaaba as Allah’s birds.9 There can be no doubt that Al-Uzza and Hubal were survivors of that primitive Semitic cult with which the names of Athtar and Athirat (Ishtar and Asherah) are so indissolubly associated. Hubal is here the counterpart of Dhu-l-Shara, the god of the Nabathaeans, and Al-Uzza of his mother. Al-Uzza, ‘The powerful one,’ is clearly an epithet which has superseded an earlier name. In the South Arabic inscriptions we can see the epithet in process of evolution. One devotee consecrates an offering to Wy liirnND, ‘his Lady Uzyz,’10 while another consecrates his to (he., Uzizlat) ‘The mighty goddess.’11
This last phrase supplies the connection between Al-Uzza and Al-Lat, another of the “daughters of Allah,” as the three goddesses
1	W. R. Smith, Kinship, p. 44 n.
2	W. R. Smith, op. cit.j p. 304.
3	Cf. Ibn Hisham, I, p. 94, also Hebraica, X, 60 ff.
4Yaqut, III, 664; cf. Hebraica, X, 62 f.
6	See references above, n. 3.
6	Wellhausen, Heidentum, p. 38.
7	Ibid., p. 39.
8	See the quotations from Ephraem the Syrian, Epiphanius, Jerome, and Isaac of Antioch in Hebraica, X, 58 ff.
9	W. R. Smith, Kinship, p. 304, and E. Rutter, The Holy Cities of Arabia, London. 1925, II, 70.
19 CIS, Pt. IV. Tom. II, no. 558.
"Ibid., no. 557.218
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
worshipped at Mecca,1 were called. As Al-Uzza was worshipped at Mecca, Al-Lat was worshipped at Taif.2 All ancient references to the two goddesses show that they bore the same character. Herodotus called the Arabian goddess Alilat,3 which is clearly a Graecised form of Al-Lat. Indeed all scholars are agreed that the two were of the same character. All that the writer said of them in his “Semitic Ishtar Cult”4 5 and in Semitic Origins5 still stands. In the South Arabian name Uzizlat we see the two epithets combined in one divine name. The general features of the cult of Al-Lat, as described by ancient writers, is identical with that of the cult of Al-Uzza. The two are but variant names of a goddess of the primitive Semitic type. Whether Manat,6 the third of the daughters of Allah, was an offshoot of the same cult, we cannot now say. It is not certain what her name signifies.
From this survey of the deities of Arabia it becomes evident, we believe, that probably all its heathen deities, and certainly the most popular and influential of them, were survivals of the primitive Semitic deities of fertility. In the course of time some of them were identified with the Moon, Sun, and Venus, and possibly with one or two other heavenly bodies, but such identification was demonstrably late and in no way affected the connection of the deities so identified with springs, or the palm tree and its culture, or with their connection with the functions of animal fertility.
The connection of two of these deities with animal forms, the lion and the eagle or vulture—creatures that were totems in Egypt— raises again the question of a possible Semitic totemism. The doves of Al-Uzza hardly raise the question, since the goddess was not represented in the form of the bird. It would seem that the evidence against Semitic totemism cited in the preceding chapter is decisive against the existence in early times of a general totemism among
1	Sura 53: 19 £T.
2	Yaqut, III, 664 (quoted in Hebraica, X, 62 f.). Taif was the sanctuary of the Thaqif. The nosb or pillar’ of the goddess was seen there by Doughty; see his Arabia Deserta, II, 511, 515, 517.
3	Book III, 8.
4	Published in Hebraica, IX, 131-165, and X, 1-74.
5	P. 233 ff. and 235 ff.
61 have no further knowledge of her than I had forty years ago. For that see, Hebraica, X, 63.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
219
the Semites. The vulture-gods and the lion-god (Yaghuth) are to be accounted for either as sporadic survivals of a totemism which the ancestors of the Semites brought with them when they broke away from their Hamitic kinsfolk, or as the result of later waves of Hamitic immigrants into Arabia. Such influxes of Hamites have invaded the land again and again, and might have brought these instances of animal deities with them into the country. The simple toleration or appropriation of living things, such as the sheltering of doves by Al-Uzza and the appropriating of camels by Al-Fals, or of herds by Al-Galsad, might have arisen in ways quite unconnected with totemism. In any event, there is no evidence that these deities were ever represented, the one in the form of a dove, and the other in the form of a camel. Such identification of the deity with the animal would seem to be essential as evidence of early totemism.
What is known of the religious festivals of early Arabia has already been set forth in Chapter V1 in treating of the primitive Semitic festivals and need not be repeated here. It was made clear that the festivals of the Arabs of today are survivals of those which were celebrated by their ancestors in the earliest times. In the course of the centuries different influences have come in, the most transforming of these being the ministry of the prophet Mohammed, but these new influences have served to modify and to give credence to new interpretations only; they have not been able to suppress the institutions which have their roots in the economic life of the country, and which are hallowed by associations that were hoary with age when the Prophet lived. Not only the feasts, but the great fast of Ramadhan is such a survival. W. R. Smith was, we believe, right in his claim2 that in the first instance fasting was simply a preparation for the eating of holy flesh. In heathen Arabia, therefore, the fast which later was extended to cover a whole month, and which still is immediately followed by the feast of Bairam, is, like the fasting in the Hebrew Day of Atonement, an adaptation of a fast of primitive Semitic times.
Indeed, scanty as our sources are, a reconstruction of the pre-Islamic religion of Arabia, even in the dim outline which is all that is possible for us, reveals the fact that, much as Mohammed
1	See p. lSlff.
2	Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., p. 434.220
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
may have been influenced by Jewish and Christian ideas, the substructure of his religious edifice lay deep in that heathenism, the long history of which has been sketched in the preceding pages. Allah, whom the Prophet proclaimed, was not a new god; he was Al-Ilah, ‘The Ilah’ that had long been known both in North and South Arabia/ whose name was an epithet which had been applied here and there to the supreme deity of local pantheons, and had gradually superseded local names. When the transition occurred the local gods may have been thought of as Athtar, Wadd, Al-maqqahu, 'Amm, or some other deity, but under whatever name he was worshipped at the time, the epithet Ilah triumphed over his earlier name. His beginnings reached far back into prehistory and had its roots in that complex of ideas suggested by the names Athtar (Ishtar, Ashtart) and Athirat (Asherah). What Mohammed did for this Ilah is analogous to what Amos and his contemporaries did for Yahweh. He elevated him to be the god of the whole world. Whatever conceptions he may have borrowed from the Old Testament (and it is by no means denied that he made such borrowing),2 he so engrafted these on this native Arabian stem that they too partook of the Arabian genius.
Further, when the Prophet chose Mecca instead of Jerusalem as the holy city of Islam, and later followed the choice by the making of the pilgrimage, the performing of the ceremonies, and the capture of the sacred places of the Quraish, and enjoined these ceremonies upon his followers,3 he adopted as parts of his religion customs and rites that had their origin in the worship of Al-Uzza and Hubal. The Kaaba and its sacred stones were originally the shrine and symbols of those gods, the sacred doves of the Kaaba were the birds of Al-Uzza, and the sacrifices of sheep were originally sacrifices to these deities, since the Prophet’s early message of the oneness of Allah and the necessity of submission was a gospel that had in it no place for sacrifice. Indeed no one can read an account of the ceremonies of the Hag, such, for example, as that of Rutter,4 without
1	Nielsen has already perceived this: see his Handbuch der altarabischen Altertums-kunde, p. 219.
2	See the writer’s “Mohammedan and Christian Conceptions of God” in James L. Barton’s The Christian Approach to Islam, Boston, 1918, Ch. IX.
3	Cf. Sir William Muir’s Mahomet and Islam, London, 1895, Chs. XXX-XXXV.
4	Cf. E. Rutter, The Holy Cities of Arabia, New York, 1928,1, Chs. IX-XIX.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
221
being convinced, if he has any knowledge of the unreasoned taboos and ceremonies of early religion, that the ritual of the Hag is a ritual of Al-Uzza and Hubal, purified and veneered with a coating of Islamism.
Across the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and the Red Sea there lies a country that has for long been inhabited by the Kushite branch of the Hamites. Into this country immigrants from South Arabia made their way perhaps as early as 1000 B.C.1 These immigrants were a tribe called Habishat, which had lived in Arabia on the east coast of the Red Sea, and which migrated across the sea into Africa.2 In time the name has been corrupted into Abyssinia. The Semitic emigrants from South Arabia mingled with Hamites, Nubians, and Negroes, and formed the Abyssinians of history. To this day Hamitic tribes, the Chamir and Bedaue, occupy a part of their land, being wedged in between sections of the Semitic-speaking Abyssinians, while on the south the Abyssinians are flanked by the Hamitic 'Afars or Dankils. For centuries they employed the South Arabian script in writing, but after long contact with Egypt under the Ptolemies and the Romans3 they developed an alphabet of their own, called Ge'ez. Epigraphic and architectural monuments of these people have been found at Yeha and Aksum in Abyssinia. It is from these that our information concerning the religion of heathen Abyssinia is drawn. At a date which cannot be accurately determined, but which may have been about 300-350 A.D., the kings of Aksum began to write inscriptions, and claim to have been masters of the kingdom of Saba and Raidan in South Arabia.
The oldest of the settlements appears to have been that at Yeha, the ancient name of which was Awa.4 5 Here were found the remains of a temple in connection with which were several pillars which were evidently identical in use and significance to the Arabian nosb and the Hebrew massebah.b At Yeha the inscriptions were not only in
1	Cf. D. H. Müller, Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Abbesinien, Wien, 1894, p. 2. Theodore Bent, The Sacred City of the Ethiopians, London, 1893, p. 232, places it 800 to 700 B.C.
2	So Rossini and Littmann; cf. E. Littmann, Deutsche Aksum-Expedition, Berlin, 1915,1, 41.
3	Cf. D. H. Müller, op. cit., p. 3, and Littmann, op. cit., p. 42.
4	Cf. Bent, op. cit., ch. VIII, Müller, op. cit., p. 57 ff., and Littmann, op. cit., p. 20 f.
5	Cf. Bent, op. cit., pp. 138, 139, and Littmann, op. cit., I, 21, and II, 2, and 79 ff.222
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
the script of South Arabia,1 but a number of them were dedicated to the god Al-maqqahu,2 the patron god of the Sabseans, the god, who, for a thousand years, was the most popular deity in that part of Arabia. The most interesting aspect of the information yielded by the remains from Yeha is, from the point of view of this investigation, the establishment of the connection of this culture with the city of Saba, which this divine name attests.
At Aksum there were also found the remains of an ancient temple and a larger number of monolithic pillars.3 These pillars differed in height from most of the massebahs4 found in other parts of the Semitic world, except those at Petra. Some of them are of a length and slenderness which reminds one of the Egyptian obelisk, though the summits have not, like those of the obelisks, been cut into a pyramidal form. In another respect the pillars of Aksum differ from all known massebahs. Many of them have at their bases hearths,5 making them altars as well as pillars. Perhaps, however, the union of altar-hearth and pillar was more common in the Semitic world than has been supposed, for Mesha of Moab, when he expelled the Gadites from Ataroth, boasts that he brought back an oriel, or altar-hearth, and dragged it before Chemosh.6
At Aksum in the fourth century A.D. there flourished a kingdom, some of the kings of which have left us inscriptions in the Ge'ez script. Two of these from Ezana, son of Ela-Amida,7 disclose to us the development of a native Abyssinian pantheon. Ezana lived about 350 A.D. About 380-400 A.D. the country was Christianized by missionaries from Egypt or Nubia.8 The glimpse of heathenism
1	See Bent, op. cit., pp. 232-238 and D. H. Müller, op. cit., p. 59 ff.
2	The evidence is this: an inscription from Yeha describes a god whose name is broken away as ‘lord of Awa’ (Bent, op. cit., p. 237), and in the Sabaean inscriptions Al-maqqahu is frequently so called: cf. CIS, Pt. IV, nos. 74, 80, 99, 126, 147, and 155.
3	Cf. Bent, op. cit., pp. 182-185, and Littmann, op. cit., II, pp. 3-43.
4	Cf. for other Semitic massebahs the writer’s Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., Figs. 204, 211, 212, and for Petra, Fig. 219. Cf. with these Littmann, Abb. 40, p. 21.
5	See Bent, op. cit., p. 185, and Littmann, op. cit., II, pp. 2 and 14.
6	Moabite Stone, 1.11; cf. Smend and Socin’s Inschrift Mesa von Moab, Freiburg, 1886; M. Lidzbarski, Nordsemitische Epigraphik, Tafel I; G. A. Cooke, North Semitic Inscriptions, Oxford, 1903, p. 1 ff. Weimar, 1898; and the writer’s Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 459.
7	Published by D. H. Müller, op. cit., pp. 39 £f. and 44 fi.
8	Cf. Littmann, op. cit., I, 51 ff.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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which Ezana gives us is, therefore, the view of a cult that was about to pass away.
In the first of the inscriptions referred to Ezana recounts his victories over Adan. After recounting the booty which he took, he tells how he erected a throne and placed it in the protection of the three gods, Astar, Barras, and Medr.1 Evidently these three deities constituted a triad, as Athtar, Wadd, and Nakrakh did among the Minaeans, and Athtar, Al-maqqahu, and Shams among the Sabaeans.2 As in the two Arabian triads the third member was a goddess, so we should expect Medr to be a goddess here. In the other inscription, after recounting a longer victorious struggle with the Noba, he gives thanks to Barras without whom he could not have subdued his enemies, and erects a throne and places it under the protection of Medr who supports it.
Astar is clearly the Athtar of South Arabia, transplanted by the immigrants, but with his name dialectically a bit transformed. The second inscription shows that, as in South Arabia, he was not the patron god of the land, that place being held by Barras and Medr. In spite of this, the age-long honor paid to this god of fertility by the Semites compelled these African descendants of the old Semitic stock to place him at the head of their pantheon. Medr is the Ethiopic word for ‘earth,’ and, as Müller long ago pointed out,3 is an earth-goddess. This fact leads one to expect that Barras was also a native African god. Müller compares the Ethiopic root haras, ‘be bright,’ and conjectures that Barras was a thunder god.4 As the Arabic barasa has, among other meanings, ‘water land before cultivating,’ it seems quite possible that Barras was a weather-god. In Abyssinia, where there is every year a rainy season, it would be natural for the weather-god to hold an important place.
It thus appears that Barras and Medr are African deities of fertility which, in the lapse of time, the Abyssinians had combined with, or allowed to supersede the deities of the triad which their Semitic ancestors had brought to the country together with Athtar. Such a development is just what we should expect. Nevertheless
1	Cf. Müller, op. cit., pp. 39-41.
2	Already perceived by Rüppell and Müller; cf. Müller, op. cit., p. 51.
3	Müller, ibid.
4	Müller, op. cit., p. 44.224
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the fact that Astar was still venerated as the head of the Abyssinian pantheon until Abyssinian heathenism was conquered by Christianity, is most significant.
In one sense, however, the old cult was never conquered. It contributed to the Abyssinian Church a number of customs that differentiate the ritual of that Church from that of other parts of Christendom. All the Church festivals are celebrated with music and dancing like heathen orgies.1 On entering the church the threshold and doorposts are kissed, showing they are held to be sacred.2 The great festival of the year is the feast of the Cross, which occurs in September, the month of the old Semitic date-harvest festival, and which we have already identified with it.3 An important part of the celebration of this festival is the building of fires on high places and the slaughter of oxen before sunrise—traits not only heathen in their origin, but which connect themselves in form with the morning sacrifice of the camel to Al-Uzza by the Arabs of Sinai, which the son of Nilus witnessed.4 The autumn festival of the primitive Athtar is scarcely disguised by its Christian name. Similarly at the feast of Epiphany in January there is a ceremony of blessing the waters, accompanied by songs which, while given a biblical coloring, are more appropriate in many respects to an invocation of water, such as heathen might address to a water-god.5 The church at Aksum is probably the old temple; and to this day the old Semitic right of asylum is enjoyed by the wrongdoer,6 as it was in Israel at the altars of Yahweh.7
Whatever violent changes may occur in theology, there is never an abrupt and complete break in the religious life of a people, and just as the old Semitic cult of Arabia furnished much to Mohammedanism, so, transplanted to Africa and somewhat modified there, it also furnished much to the Abyssinian Church.
Before turning from the South Semitic territory notice should be
1	Cf. Bent, Sacred City of the Ethiopians, pp. 53,83,84, and 165; also W. Winstanley. A Visit to Abyssinia, London, 1881, II, 127.
2	Winstanley, op. cit., p. 127.
3	Above, p. 154f.
4	W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., pp. 166, 281, etc.
5	Littmann, Deutsche Aksum-Expedition, I, 14.
6	Bent, op. cit., p. 163.
7	Cf. Ex. 21:12-14 and 1 Kgs. 1 and 2.SOUTH SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
225
taken of a possible religious development of great importance. It has recently been argued with great acumen that the “Sealand” of the cuneiform inscriptions lay in large part in Arabia to the southwest of southern Babylonia and west of the Persian Gulf.1 The dynastic tablets call the second dynasty of Babylon the Dynasty of the Sealand. Its first two kings bore the names Ilu-ma-ilum, ‘Verily Ilu is god/ and Itti-ili-nibiy ‘With Ilu is my name.’1 It appears from these names that Ilu was a distinct god among these Arabians of the Sealand as El was a little later among the Amorites and Phoenicians.2 Among the proper names of the time of the first dynasty of Babylon there are a number which are similar, as, e.g., Ilu-damiq, Tlu is gracious/ and Ilu-nasir, Tlu is protector.’3 It has long been recognized that there was an Amorite element in the Babylonian population of this period, and it seems probable that El (Ilu) became a distinct deity among the Amorites before they migrated from Arabia, and was carried thence by them into Babylonia and Syria.
1	Cf. R. P. Dougherty, The Sealand of Ancient Arabia, New Haven, 1932, Ch. IX and p. 174 f.
2	See below, Ch. IX, pp. 288ff and 307ff.
3	Cf. BE, VI1, 43.VIII
BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
IN SPITE of the surprising light shed by recent discoveries on the beginnings of Babylonian civilization, to the main features of which attention has already been called,1 the problem of disentangling the strands which blended in prehistoric time to produce the religion of the historic period is the most difficult which we have to face in the whole field of our investigation. That elements contributed by three races entered into the resultant religion must, we believe, be granted. That in the early period a very large number of spirits were held in veneration is attested by documentary evidence. When, however, we attempt to ascertain which of the more than 3300 deities whose names are known were contributed by each of the different races, the problem is baffling on account of its magnitude, its complexity, and the difficulty of finding decisive clues.
In attempting to fathom the mysteries of this bewildering maze one clue, which has already emerged in our discussion, may be safely followed. It is that the goddess Ishtar (originally Ashdar) is of Semitic origin. The center in Babylonia at which we can trace her worship back to the greatest antiquity is Erech, a town the name of which, as has been pointed out in Chapter III, is of Semitic origin. In the Gilgamesh Epic, a poem which embodies traditions and memories which their authors believed to date from before the deluge, Ishtar figures as the important deity of the place. While the epic does not enter into a detailed description of the conceptions entertained concerning the goddess, it is clear from the beginning of its sixth tablet, or canto, that she was thought of as a goddess who entered easily and lightly into sexual alliances—in a word, a goddess who reflected in her conduct the manners and customs of a crude and primitive society. In the epic story a place of considerable importance is assigned to a prostitute whoes character and conduct correspond closely with those of the qedashoth or sacred prostitutes who, according to the Old Testament, were connected with the cult
1 See above, Ch. III.
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227
of Ashtoreth. Scholars have accordingly long inferred (and rightly) that the epic preserves a memory of the existence of the worship of Ishtar at Erech, together with such female appendages to her cult, in prehistoric times.
In the first tablet of the epic another goddess, Aruru, appears, who creates Enkidu, a primitive man, from dust of the ground in much the same way that Yahweh is said to have made man in the second chapter of Genesis. Aruru is accordingly an earth-goddess and a mother-goddess. Deimel regards Aruru as originally ya-ah-ru-ru,x a name-formation analogous to that of Yahweh—a most probable etymology. It would mean, then, ‘The one who causes (noble) birth.’2 This would clearly be an epithet of Ishtar. It has already been remarked how deities multiply (or split up) by the use of epithets; these goddesses afford a prehistoric example of it at Erech. Later, Aruru, as an epithet of the Semitic goddess, was applied sometimes to goddesses originally Sumerian or Asiatic, as Semites mingled with the population of cities originally peopled by those races. This happened at Sippar and Adab.3
Although Erech was founded or, at an early date, occupied by Semites, Sumerians were mingled with them before the dawn of history, and such progress in thought had been made that celestial deities were already mingled with chthonic. Thus in the epic the Sumerian god Anu appears and is portrayed as the father of Ishtar.
Another clue, the evidence for which has not yet been presented, but which is, we believe, fairly well made out, is that Ninkhursag, a goddess of fertility, was brought into Babylonia by the Sumerians. Whence the Sumerians came, is a problem that is not yet solved. There are reasons, however, for believing that they entered Babylonia from the south, having approached it by way of the Persian Gulf. The reasons have been given already in Chapter Up. 36
It is not possible, from the data which we have at present, to state definitely where the homeland of the Sumerians was, though the writer has suggested that it was possibly Oman, in the southeast corner of Arabia.
1	Cf. Pantheon Babylonicum, no. 105.
2	From lin , a root which has the meaning indicated both in Hebrew and Arabic.
3	See the references given in the article “Aruru” in Ebeling und Meissner’s Reallexikon der Assyriologie, I, 160.228
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The deity contributed by the Sumerians, the goddess Ninkhursag, was a mother-goddess of fertility. Her name, which means ‘Lady of the mountain,’ indicates that she originated in a mountainous country such as Babylonia is not. Woolley found one of her most ancient temples at El-Obeid.1 She was also worshipped in historic time at Nippur, where she was the consort of Enlil, though in later times she was merged into the goddess Ninlil. At Lagash and other Sumerian centers she was adored without being associated with a consort. According to the inscriptions of Eannatum, one of the early rulers of Lagash, the especial function of Ninkhursag which differentiated her from other goddesses, was that she nursed children. This monarch often describes himself as one who had been “nourished with the milk of life by Ninkhursag,”2 and on one occasion when, confronted by an especial crisis, he went to pray to her, he states that she “lifted him to her shining knees and gave him suck from her breast.”3 Just as the goddess Ishtar can often be distinguished from other goddesses by her qedashoth, so Ninkhursag may be discerned as the mother-goddess with a nursing child. Figurines of a nude goddess are abundant from all parts of Babylonia. These might in many cases be either Ishtar or Ninkhursag, but when the nude goddess carries a child, as is the case in a number of the figurines from Nippur,4 we are warranted by the statements of Eannatum in identifying her with Ninkhursag. We distinguish, accordingly, at the dawn of Babylonian history two goddesses of fertility, Ashdar (Ishtar) and Ninkhursag, who were worshipped in different centers, the one Semitic, the other Sumerian. Ashdar was worshipped at Erech; Ninkhursag at El-Obeid.
Obscure as are the problems connected with the Central Asiatic race, it seems to the writer tolerably clear that they contributed to Babylonian religion the gods Enlil and Enki. As pointed out in
1	See H. R. Hall and C. L. Woolley, Al-'Ubaid, Philadelphia and London, 1927. The temple, the excavation of which is described in this volume, and which dated from the time of the first dynasty of Ur, is a temple of Ninkhursag.
2	See the writer’s RISA, p. 41 fL
3	Ibid., p. 25.
4	Cf. L. Legrain, Terra-Cottas from Nippur, Philadelphia, 1930, nos. 37-47. In figurines of the later time the goddess was not always nude. These figurines are the early Babylonian conception of the madonna and child. Cf. also Ward’s Seal Cylinders of Western Asia, Chapter XXIV.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
229
Chapter III, there is evidence that the predominating element in the civilization of Jemdet Nasr was Central Asiatic, and the two deities whose names appear in those texts are Enlil,1 ‘Lord of the air/ and Enki,2 ‘Lord of the earth.’ Both Enlil and Enki were in later time worshipped in all parts of Babylonia, although in the historic period the center of the worship of the former was at Nippur, and that of the latter at Eridu. It has sometimes been supposed that in prehistoric time the city of Nippur had conquered and controlled all of Babylonia and had in consequence imposed on the whole country the worship of Enlil. In the light of our present knowledge that seems unnecessary. The ‘Lord of the air’ (or ‘of the spirits’) was worshipped by all the Babylonian members of this Central Asiatic race as their principal deity, and was carried by them to each of their settlements. An especially important temple of his gave to the city of Nippur its original name, and there, in the historic period, was his principal shrine. Next to him in importance was the ‘Lord of the earth,’ whose shrine in the historic period was at Eridu. Enlil became the ‘Father of the gods,’ and Ea the god of wisdom. It thus appears that four of the principal deities of the Babylonian pantheon can be traced to the three races that composed its population. This clue may be taken as a starting-point in an endeavor to discover the origin of the various pantheons of the country. It must not be assumed that the Asiatic race had no other deities than the two mentioned, but Enlil and Enki are all that these early tablets happen to reveal.
Postulating, then, this early origin for Enlil, we next inquire what conceptions of him were entertained in subsequent centuries.
One of the frequent titles of Enlil was lugal-kur-kur-ra, usually translated “king of countries,” but which might equally well be rendered “king of the mountains.” As the sign kur is employed instead of ki, it is clear that it was applied while those who worshipped Enlil still lived in the mountains and before they settled in the alluvium of Babylonia. That he was originally a deity of a people living in the mountains is further shown by the fact that Entemena says in a votive inscription, “the pure water of Enlil
1	Cf. Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts, VII, no. 33, rev. 13; no. 65; and no. 128 rev. ii, 1.
2	Ibid., no. 12, rev., iv.230
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in a great stone libation-bowl he brought down from the mountain for him.”1 That a part of his ritual on great occasions should be the pouring out of water brought from the mountains is a feature which attests the mountain origin of Enlil. These features fit perfectly the theory that Enlil was a deity of that Asiatic race which found its way into Babylonia via the ridge of mountains to the East of the Tigris.2
Urzage, an early king of Kish, called Enlil “king of countries” and refers to Ninlil as “lady of heaven and earth, refuge of their little ones, spouse of Enlil.”3 From this we learn that at the dawn of history Enlil had as a spouse a goddess who was either an earth-divinity or a female reflex of himself. That Ninlil was regarded as a goddess of fertility and of family life is indicated by an early votive offering which a man presented to her for his own life and for the lives of his wife and child.4 That at Nippur both Enlil and Ninlil were regarded as deities of fertility is further indicated by an early myth in which the courtship by Enlil of Ninlil is described; their marital union, which caused the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris to overflow and fertilize the lands, is then said to follow. Enlil and Ninlil are in this text both represented as deities of fertility.5 Enlil is called by Entemena the “Father of the gods”6—an apella-tion which combines the idea of a god of fertility with a recognition of his priority among the gods of the land. Urukagina describes him as “the Father, the loud-thunderer”7—a phrase which combines ideas of fertility with a conception of his character as god of the air and of storms. From the beginning this air-weather-storm god was regarded as the supreme deity of the country, probably because he was the deity of the race that was first in the land. One of his common titles, as already noted, was for centuries “king of countries.”8 One ruler of Erech called him “lord of heaven and earth.”9
1	RISA, p. 53.
2	Cf. E. A. Speiser, Mesopotamian Origins, Philadelphia, 1930, pp. 164-170.
3	RISA, p. 5.
4	Ibid., p. 9, no. 5.
8 G. A. Barton, Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, no. 4, p. 35 fit.
6	RISA, pp. 57 and 61.
7	Ibid., p. 77.
8	Cf. ibid., pp. 4 (no. 3 and 4), 57.61, 97, and passim.
9	Lugalkigubnidudu, RISA, p. 96.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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This supremacy was recognized at Lagash in the period of Sumerian supremacy there, for Ningirsu, the head of the pantheon of Lagash, was regularly called “the warrior (or hero) of Enlil,”1 and once “the son of Enlil.”2 It was also recognized at Ur, where one of the kings of Larsa called Nannar “the son of Enlil.”3 Due to this priority and sovereignty of Enlil, rulers of the country whose homes were in other cities, recognized that they derived their authority from him. Lugalzaggisi derives both his patesiat and kingship from Enlil.4 Thus Sargon called himself “the great patesi, (tenant-farmer) of Enlil.”5 Enlil is acknowledged by Rimush as the giver of his kingship.6 Naram-Sin brought captive kings and presented them to Enlil,7 apparently in recognition of EnliPs sovereignty. Through the earlier historical records Enlil is always represented as the head of the pantheon. By the time of Gudea, however, that syncretism and reflection upon the universe which brought into being the first triad had begun, at least outside of Nippur, for that ruler sometimes puts Anu, the Sumerian god of the sky, before Enlil.8 By the time of Rim-Sin the triad, Anu, Enlil, and Enki— god of the sky, god of the air, and god of the earth—had been fully formed.9 For the greater portion of the first millennium of Babylonian history, however, Enlil held his place at the head of the pantheon. Sometimes, outside of Nippur, the native Sumerian goddess, Ninkhursag, displaced his Asiatic consort, Ninlil. Thus at Lagash Entemena associates Ninkhursag with Enlil, as though they were consorts.30
In the historic period, the chief temple to Enlil was Ekur at Nippur, but shrines were dedicated to him in other cities, probably in the temples of local deities. Festivals were celebrated to him, at the time of which the terraces of his temple, Ekur, were thronged
1	Cf. RISA, p. 57 and passim.
2	Ibid., p. 243.
3	Ibid., p. 315.
4	Ibid., pp. 97 and 99.
5	Ibid., p. 100 and 101. Since patesi means ‘tenant-farmer’ the same applies to Lugalzaggisi.
6	Ibid., p. 120.
7	Ibid., p. 139.
s Cf. RISA, pp. 187 and 253.
9	Ibid., pp. 236 and 238.
10	Ibid., pp. 59 fi, and 65.232
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
with people.1 His supremacy at the head of the pantheon was maintained until some centuries after the rise of Babylon to the hegemony of the country under Hammurabi, when his place was usurped by the god Marduk, to whom many of the attributes of Enlil were gradually transferred.2
The other god whom we have been led to believe was contributed to Babylonian religion by the Asiatic race was Enki, 'Lord of the land/ The element ki in his name denotes, however, the irrigated land of Babylonia, not the mountain land of the world.3 The sign ki was in the early writing an outline of two streams connected by irrigating canals which crossed the intervening territory.4 It signified the ‘watered country/ Its significant feature was the water. It would accordingly be more correct to say, as Deimel does,6 that Enki was lord of the water rather than of the land. In Babylonia one does not have to dig down very far into the alluvium to find water. Enki was accordingly ‘king of the abyss/6 Wells, canals, and reservoirs belonged to him.7 As water was regarded as a masculine element, as already pointed out,8 it was natural that the lord of water should be a god. As he was the god of water and irrigating canals were essential to the use of water for rendering the land fertile, he naturally became the god who taught the structure of canals,9 grading,10 etc. A natural extention of this thought made him the god of intelligence and wisdom. He gave Eannatum11 his intelligence as he did many others;12 he taught Gudea the plan for rebuilding Eninnu;13 he helped Sin-iddinam deepen the Tigris.14 In time it was believed that all that insight which passed in Babylonia, Egypt, and Israel under the name of ‘wisdom’ was given by Enki.
1	Ibid., p. 235.
2	Cf. M. Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, pp. 54 and 140.
3	This last was originally the picture of a mountain; see OBW, no. 322.
4	Cf. OBW, no. 419.
5	Pantheon Babylonicum, p. Ill, under no. 862.
6	Cf. RISA, p. 29, col. xix.
7	Cf. RISA, pp. 49, 51, 77, and 288, where it is said such structures were built for him.
8	See above, Ch. V, p. 140.
9	RISA, p. 53.
10	Ibid., p. 228.
11	Ibid., pp. 33 and 37.
12	Cf., e.g., ibid., pp. 53, 61, 65, 71, 321, and 381.
13	Ibid., p. 223.
14	Ibid., p. 317.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
233
As the god of the land a cemetery at Lagash was called 'the enclosure of Enki.’1 As the god of water he possessed the bank of the canal Guedin at Lagash.2 As the god of wisdom, it was he who gave oracles3 and was master of divination,4 and his word was true.5 He became the god of the Asiatic settlement of NUNki, afterward called Eridu. As already pointed out, NUNki was 'Fish-town.’ As the god of water, it was natural that Enki, as worshipped here, came to be conceived in the form of a fish.6 As this town was invaded by Sumerians before 3000 B.C., who came, apparently, from the south, and who brought with them a civilization even higher than that of their predecessors of the Asiatic race, Enki was later confused with the coming of the Sumerians in the legend of Oannes,7 a god who came up the Persian Gulf from the south and taught men agriculture and the arts. In this legend we have an extension of the earlier conception of Enki as god of wisdom.
Like Enlil, Enki was worshipped in all parts of Babylonia. As one of the gods of the first inhabitants of the country, who had built its dikes, made canals, and rescued it from a swampy morass, Enki, who was believed to have taught men how to do all this, was reverenced everywhere. While in the historic period his principal seat was at Eridu, every city of the country had a shrine to him.
It appears that, like Enlil, he had a female counterpart, though she is mentioned but once or twice in the early texts so far published. As men did not live without wives, it was believed that the gods did not. This consort was in the time of Eannatum called Ninki.8 In the time of Shulgi she was called Dam-gal-nun-na,9 and still later, Damkina.10
The Semitic Akkadians called Enki Ea,11 probably originally Ya, which was a divine name among the Hebrews. The ibex was
1	Ibid., pp. 81 and 83.
2	Ibid., p. 55.
Ubid., p. 239.
4	Ibid., p. 23.
5	Ibid., p. 187.
6	Cf. Collection du Clercq, Paris, I, 1888, pi. xxxii, no. 343.
7	Cf. Cory’s Ancient Fragments, London, 1876. p. 57 f.
8	RISA, p. 31, col. iii.
Ubid., p. 279.
10	See the references in Deimel’s Pantheon Babylonicum, p. 100 £f.
11	Cf. CT, XXIV, 3, 29; 14, 17; 52, 108, etc.234
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
sacred to him. It is apparently to Enki that Gudea refers when he speaks of “the holy ibex of the abyss.”1
Unlike Enlil, Enki appears to have been a deity developed in Babylonia by the canal and dike builders who first wrested the swampy soil from the marshes and made it habitable. This fact connected him both with water and irrigation, and the skill to do it gave him his reputation fot intelligence, learning, and wisdom. In the mythologic literature cunning plans are always attributed to him. On the other hand he is usually beneficient. Prayers are never addressed to him to cast an avenging net over enemies, or to tear out their thrones or destroy their seed.
By the time of Rim-Sin the cosmic triad of gods, consisting of Anu, Enlil, and Enki, had been formed.2 As Enki was the god of water, he naturally held the third place, giving precedence to the sky-god and the god of the air. In later myths he was sometimes represented as the spouse of the mother-goddess Nintud (a by-name of Ninkhursag), who, by his marital union with her, caused the irrigating waters to flow and clothe the world with herbage.3 In this myth he performed the part assigned in another myth (already quoted) to Enlil.
Ninkhursag, the Sumerian mother-goddess, was, as noted above, like Enlil, a deity that originated in a mountainous country outside of Babylonia. We can first trace her presence in the country at El-Obeid, near Ur, where Aannapadda, the second king of the first dynasty of Ur, built a temple to her at the very dawn of history.4 As the Sumerians pushed their way into the country they carried her worship with them. They established themselves at Kesh, a place which flourished before the dawn of written history, where Ninkhursag’s worship was established.5 A Sumerian liturgy found on an inscribed tablet at Nippur6 and written in a pre-Sargonic script, which mentions Kesh7 and Khallab, and which may have
1	RISA, p. 231: cf. Deimel, op. cit., no. 860, ii, 2.
2	Ibid., pp. 327 and 329.
3	Cf. Langdon, in Vol. V of Mythology of all Races, p. 196. Cf. also the writer in The American Journal of Theology, XXI, 581.
4	RISA, p. 3.
5	Ibid., p. 275.
6	Cf. G. A. Barton, Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, New Haven, 1918, no. 1.
7	Col. i, 2.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
235
been originally composed in Kesh, is devoted especially to Nin-khursag, whom it identifies with Sir,1 the great earth-serpent, and regards as the mistress of demon-enchantment.2 The liturgy on the text was originally composed in the time of a plague, which in antiquity was always believed to be the work of demons, and Nini-khursag is invoked to stem the sickness. She is in this text regarded as the spouse of Enlil.3 She is also addressed as mother. She was so well established at Adab in the time of Mesilim, king of Kish, that, in presenting a votive vase to the temple there, he inscribed himself as her son.4 On account of the abundance of inscribed material from Lagash, it happens that we can trace her worship more fully in that city than in many others. Eannatum called her his mother,5 and asserts many times that she ‘nourished him with the milk of life.’6 Once, when he prayed to her, he says she appeared to him in a dream, took him on her knees, and offered him her breast.7 Entemena regarded her, rather than Ninlil, as the consort of Enlil.8 He built a sanctuary to her,9 and informs us that she was associated with Enlil and Enki as one of the three deities who protected boundaries.10 The place of her oracle was called ‘The holy forest.’11 Later, Lugalzaggisi was, like Eannatum, ‘nourished by her life-giving milk.’12 Manishtusu invokes Nin-khursag to hinder child-bearing in the land of anyone who may destroy his insciption or interrupt the arrangements he had made for sacrifice in the temple of Shamash.13 As Manishtusu was an Akkadian, perhaps he confused Ninkhursag with Ishtar. That, however, is hardly probable since his inscription is written in Akkadian and he could easily have written Ishtar, had he so desired.
1	Col. xi. Cf. also cols, i and ix.
2	Cf. col. v.
3	Cf. col. xi.
4	RISA, p. 5.
5	Ibid., p. 29.
6	Ibid., pp. 37, 39, 43, 45, 53, and 55.
7	Ibid., p. 25.
8	Ibid., pp. 61 and 65.
9	RISA, p. 59.
10	Ibid., p. 63.
11	Ibid., p. 65.
12	Ibid., p. 99.
13	Ibid., p. 135.236
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Ur-Bau called Ninkhursag ‘mother of the gods.’1 Gudea speaks of her as “the lady who causes growth in the city, the mother of its children.” In the same inscription he addresses her as Nin-tud ‘Lady of births’ or ‘Child-bearing-lady/ and ‘mother of the gods.’2 It follows that in the later texts the goddess Nintud is identical with Ninkhursag, being the same deity, only designated by a different epithet. Both Entemena and Gudea also associate her with Enlil, apparently as his consort.3 Urnammu, the founder of the third dynasty of Ur, speaks of her as The lady of Kesh.’4 As Kesh was a city of southern Babylonia in prehistoric time, which sank into oblivion at the dawn of history, it seems probable that the invading Sumerians had established the worship of Ninkhursag there as early as at El-Obeid. In one passage Gudea speaks of a smith who was ‘priest of the divine lady who brought forth the land’ (dNiN-TUD-KALAM-MA-GÈ.5) In the light of the passage already quoted, this is clearly a reference to Ninkhursag. A later myth represents her as the wife of Enki, with whom, by entering into marital union, he caused the irrigating waters to flow over the land.6
Such was the character of this Sumerian mother-goddess. In so many respects she resembled the Semitic Ishtar that inevitably as the two races mingled in Babylonia, their attributes must have been confused and the two blended into one.
Taking the Sumerian conception as a whole, it represented the Sumerian earth-goddess Ninkhursag, sometimes as the wife of the Sumerian weather-god, Enlil, sometimes as the wife of the Asiatic water-god Enki. The union of these two made life in Babylonia possible. The Asiatic consort of Enki, Ninki, appears only in the time of Eannatum. After that the Sumerian mother-goddess displaced her Asiatic precursor, so closely had the two cultures fused.
1	Ibid., p. 175.
2	Ibid., p. 181.
3	Ibid., pp. 61, 65, and 249.
AIbid., p. 275.
6 Ibid., p. 221, col. xvi, 29.
6 Cf. the writer’s translation in Archæology and the Bible, 6th ed., 1933, pp. 346 ff. and his article in the American Journal of Theology, XXI (1917), 574-597. Langdon in his Le poèm sumerien du paradis, du deluge et de la chute de Vhomme, Paris, 1919, and his Semitic Mythology, Boston, 1931, has given a far less probable and satisfactory treatment of the text, though in some essential features his interpretation of 1931 is more nearly correct than was that of 1919.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
237
Turning now to the prehistoric contribution of the Semites to the religion of the country, the one Semitic deity whose presence the early material reveals is Ashdar, later called Ishtar, a name clearly equivalent to the Arabian Athtar, whose presence in its native land we have already traced. At Kish the worship of this deity in prehistoric times is vouched for by the name of Ashdar-muti,1 a prehistoric king mentioned in an early king-list. Just at the dawn of history another king, Enbi-Ashdar, was overthrown by Enshagkus-hanna.2 Evidence for the worship of this goddess at Erech in prehistoric time has already been adduced,3 and it is also vouched for at Khallab,4 another prehistoric city of southern Babylonia, where it survived until the time of the dynasty of Larsa.5
Most of our sources for the period of Sumerian supremacy are written in Sumerian. In these texts the name of this goddess is written by an ideogram which the Akkadian columns of the syllabaries define as Ishtar, but which the Sumerian columns define variously
as NI-IN,6 EN-NIN,7 NI-I-NI,8 IN-NA-NA,9 IN-NA-AN-NA,10 IN-NI-NA,11
in-nin-na,12 in-nin-ni,13 and na-na.14 To a student of Sumerian it seems clear that these forms all go back to two Sumerian epithets of this deity: nin, ‘Lady/ and en-nin, ‘Lord-lady.’ All of them except the first are corruptions of the second. As the first is rare, being known to the writer through one syllabary only, it follows that the Sumerians called this Semitic goddess the ‘Lord-lady.’ One naturally asks why this should have been.15
The answer is to be found in the fact noted in the preceding chap-
1	RISA, p. 353.
2	Ibid., p. 7.
3	See above, p. 226£f.
4	See the writers Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, p. 11, xiiL 6.
5	RISA, p. 323.
6	CT, XII, 11, 25b
7	CT, XII, 11, 26b.
8II R, 39, 63a.
9	CT, XI, 50, 8c.
10	CT, XI, 49, 6c.
11	OBI, no. 148, i, 6.
12	L. W. King, Babylonian Magic, 1, 31.
13	Ibid., Var.
14IIR, 50, 67ab.
15 This origin of the name was not clear to me when I published RISA. In that work I followed one of the later spellings of the name, Ininni.238
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
ter,1 that in Arabia itself Athtar was both a god and a goddess. We should expect, therefore, that both the masculine and feminine forms of the deity would be carried to other countries. There is evidence that this was done and that sometimes an attempt was made to represent both the masculine and feminine form in the same image. Thus in Punic inscriptions ‘Tanith of the face of Baal’2 is mentioned, and a Sidonian inscription speaks of ‘Ashtart of the name of Baal.’3 Indeed, as the writer pointed out more than thirty years ago,4 the earliest king of Kish (Lugaltarsi) to mention the goddess in an inscription of his own, recognizes that she has two genders by calling her at once ‘King of countries’ and ‘Lady.’5 As time went on, however, the feminine form only survived, while the masculine element was gradually separated and individualized under the name Dumuzi. Perhaps it is this early bi-sexual character of Ashdar that led to the giving of a name to her sacred women, which has been a puzzle to scholars. In the code of Hammurabi one of the four classes of devoted women were called zinnisti zikri* wome n-men,’ often translated ‘vowed women.’ Lexical evidence for the use of the root in the sense of ‘vowed’ has, however, been lacking. It would seem possible that in the designation we are to see a survival of a name originally given to connect them with the character of a bi-sexual deity.
That Ishtar (En-nin) was, like Enlil, a deity of extra-Babylonian origin, is attested by the fact that she is called “king of countries” and “lady of countries” (ktJR-KUR-RA,7 not ki-ki). This is evidence that her worship originated in a mountainous country—a condition which Arabia, the land to which we have already traced her origin—abundantly fulfils. It was this conception of her sovereignty over mountainous lands which led Eannatum to say that Ennin conferred upon him the name of ‘the mighty one exalted
1P. 210 f.
2	CIS, I, 195 and passim.
3	CIS, I, 3i8.
4	JAOS, XXI, (1899), p. 185 ff. Jastrow endeavored to disprove the point in his article “The Bearded Venus,” Revue archeologique 4 ser. XVII (1911), 271-298, but unsuccessfully.
5	RISA, p. 5.
6	Cf. the Code, 3062, 31» aDd 46, 3252, 33* and n.
7	RISA, pp. 5, 189, and 259. Ur-Enlil, king of Nippur, calls her ‘lady of the plain’
(<edin), ibid., p. 7.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
239
over the land’ (kur).1 Sometimes he also says that she named him, though without making such claims to sovereignty.2
Ishtar (Ennin) was regarded as a goddess of fertility and plenty. Ur-Bau says that she ‘filled his mouth/3 Gudea4 attributes to her the sending of rain, and Warad-Sin calls her priestess of double abundance.5 Enannatum adorned for her the ib-gal, or granary6 —a fact which would connect her with the storing of the fruits of the earth and, as we shall see below, points to the origin of Nin-urta as an epithet of Ishtar.
At a later time her worship flourished at Erech, where she was called the daughter of Anu;7 at Khallab, where she was called the child of Sin;8 and at Umma, where the god Shara was called her son.9 At Erech the name of her temple was Eanna,10 a name which was also given to her shrine at Lagash ;n at Ur her temple was named Eshbur ;12 while at Babylon, it was Duranki.13 Warad-Sin built a temple to her in the Island of Dilmun.14 Sargon of Agade regarded himself as her ‘overseer’15 or official, and in the time of his successors her worship was carried, along with that of Ninkhursag, to distant Elam.16 Two kings of the dynasty of Isin, Ishmi-Dagon17 and Bur-Sin II,18 claim to have been the ‘spouse of Ishtar.’ Probably Libit-Ishtar means to make the same claim, when he says that he ‘led captive her heart.’19 The god Dumuzi was regarded as her spouse.20
'Ibid., p. 25.
2 Ibid., p. 33 and 41,
zIbid., p. 173.
*Ibid., p. 219.
6RISA., p. 321.
*Ibid., p. 359.
7 Ibid., p. 293.
*Ibid., pp. 321, 323, and 381.
9	Ibid., pp. 383 and 295.
10	Ibid., 279.
"Ibid., p. 189.
12	Ibid., p. 363. Another of her temples was Eginabibku {Ibid., p. 375), but its location is uncertain.
13	Ibid., p. 277.
14	Ibid., p. 381.
"Ibid., p. 101.
"Ibid., p. 161.
"Ibid., p. 305.
18 Ibid., p. 309.
"Ibid., p. 307.
20 Ibid., p. 387.240
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
These references to her in the historical inscriptions reveal the popularity which the Semitic goddess enjoyed during the first millennium of Babylonian history, and the wide extent of her worship throughout the land during that time. They also show that in the mind of the writers of these inscriptions, Ishtar (Ennin), although a goddess of fertility, maintained a distinctive character in the minds of her devotees, quite distinct from that of her Sumerian rival, Ninkhursag.
A deity closely connected with Ishtar and generally worshipped in Babylonia was Dumuzi. Thirty years ago the writer believed Dumuzi to have been wholly of Semitic origin;1 he now thinks that in his cult as practised in Babylonia, Semitic and Sumerian strains were fused. Possibly there were also elements in it derived from the Asiatic race.
In the myths and legends cherished about 2100 B.C. Dumuzi, a shepherd, was regarded as one of the antedeluvian kings and is said to have reigned at the mythical city of Badurudunagar 36000 years.2 In two documents, in an early tradition it is stated that Dumuzi, a fisherman, after the flood reigned at Erech 100 years.3 Evidence has already been adduced which points to Erech as a Semitic foundation;4 the myth which regards Dumuzi as a king of Erech would, therefore, be of Semitic origin. The other would come from one of the other races—probably from the Sumerians. Ninkhursag was, as we have seen, a mother-goddess, and a mother-goddess implies a divine child. Dumuzi means in Sumerian ‘Son of life’ or ‘Living son.’ In a land in which Sumerian was the language of religious devotion, the name of the deity would be transmitted in that tongue, and in time the two child deities of Ishtar (En-nin) and Ninkhursag would be confused and fused together. Probably that is what happened in the case of Dumuzi.
The cult of Dumuzi is traceable at Surippak,5 at Lagash, at Larsa, and at other centers. An unknown ruler who dug a canal for him called him ‘noble husbandman.’6 Ur-Nina placed his image in a
1	Cf. his Semitic Origins, New York, 1902, pp. 85 ff.
2	RISA, p. 347.
3	Ibid., p. 341 and 349.
4	Cf. above, Ch. Ill, p. 65.
5	Cf. the proper names into which Dumuzi enters as a component part; Deimel, Wirtschaftstexte aus Fara, Leipzig, 1924, p. 334.
6	RISA, p. 13.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
241
temple at Girsu.1 Eannatum, who calls him ‘Dumuzi of the Abyss’ (probably referring to the fisherman Tammuz), called himself ‘the beloved of Dumuzi.’2 Ur-Bau, who built for him a temple in Girsu, called Dumuzi ‘lady of Kinunnir.’3 Some scholars think that so many deities whose names begin with nin (Ningirsu, Nin-urta, etc.) had by the time of Ur-Bau become masculine, that he employed the word nin, ‘lady’ as equivalent to ‘en,’ lord.4 As Dumuzi is elsewhere a god, perhaps this is the explanation of Ur-Bau’s use of the word. Siniddinam of Larsa claimed that his construction of a canal made glad the hearts of Shamash and Dumuzi.5 To him the two appear to have been the deities of fertility. His successor, Rim-Sin, called Dumuzi ‘lord of offspring, the bridegroom beloved of En-nin.’6
The worship of Dumuzi continued as long as the Babylonian civilization endured. Numerous hymns were written to him and prayers were offered to him.7 In the Adapa myth Dumuzi and Gishzida guard the gates of the heavenly palace of Anu.8 In the Gilgamesh epic he is the spouse of Ishtar whom she abused.9 In the syllabaries the theologians made a distinction: Dumuzi of the Abyss is classed with the sons of Ea,10 while Dumuzi belongs to the family of Sin.11 This god, who was thus akin to deities of Arabia and Syria on his Semitic side, was throughout Babylonian history one of the most popular and influential in that country.
Of other gods who were worshipped in different parts of Babylonia, the moon-god, variously called Enzu, Nannar, and Sin, may conveniently be studied next. It is generally recognized that Sin is his Semitic name, and Nielsen believes him to have been the leading deity of Arabia. It is true that in that land he took precedence
1	Ibid., p. 17.
2	Ibid., pp. 33 and 37; cf. also Ur-Bau, ibid., p. 173.
3	Ibid., p. 175.
4	Cf. Deimel, Pantheon Babylonicnni, p. 105 f.
5	RISA, p. 315.
«Ibid., p. 387.
7 Cf. Zimmern, Sumerisck-babylonische Tammuz-Lieder, Leipzig, and Babylonische Hymnen und Gebete in Auswahl, (Der alte Orient), VII, 3 and XIII, 1.
s Cf. KB, VI, pp. 96-99.
9 Tablet VI of the epic. For translations see Jensen in KB, VI, p. 169 and R.C. Thompson, The Epic of Gilgamish, London, 1928, p. 33.
i« CT, XXIV, 16, 30-35; 28, 82-85.
11 Cf. Zimmern, “Zur Herstellung der grossen babylonischen Gotterliste An-(ilu) Anum” in Berichte iiber die Verhandlungen der k. sacks. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, LXVIII (1911), Heft 4.242
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
of the sun-deity, and in Babylonian mythology he was regarded as the father of Shamash, the sun-god. We do not know at just what time the Semites began to worship celestial deities, but it was, in all probability, not before they settled in the Babylonian alluvium, for the name Sin is a corruption of the old non-Semitic Babylonian name Zu-en. This name would seem to indicate that the moon-god was worshipped in Babylonia before he was in Arabia.
The name most widely employed by the Sumerians for this god was en-zu, ‘lord of wisdom/ or ‘lord of increase/ Eannatum called him ‘the younger child of Enlil/1 and Lugalzaggisi spoke of the sun-god as his messenger.2 He was highly regarded. Thus Gudea says ‘he made his law excel in heaven/3 and several rulers regard him as an avenger of wrong and wickedness.4 The fact that he was regarded as a god of wisdom suggests that his name was, in the earliest times, an epithet of Enki, and that later, when it was applied to the moon-god exclusively, it transferred to that deity some of the functions of Enki. If the reasons adduced above for regarding Enki as a deity of Central Asiatic origin are valid, the name Enzu would also be of non-Sumerian origin, and it would follow that he was worshipped before the Sumerians entered the country, and that the Sumerians borrowed his name as they did those of Enlil and Enki. The oldest spelling of the name, Zu-en, in the opinion of the writer, indicates that the name originated with the Central Asiatic race.5
The moon-god as worshipped at Ur was called Nannar, a word meaning in Sumerian ‘he who shines’ and in Akkadian ‘a lamp.’6
1	RISA, p. 28.
2	Ibid.y p. 99.
* Ibid., p. 249.
4 Eannatum (RISA, 28), Anu-banini {ibid.y 151), Puzur-Shushinak {ibid.y 151), Idadu-Shushinak {ibid.y 161), Lasirab of Guti {ibid.y 171).
6 In the present state of our knowledge it is not possible to draw a clear line between the contributions of the Central Asiatic race and the pre-Babylonian Sumerians to the later Sumerian speech and syllabary. It is, however, the writer’s belief that the words which in the earliest inscriptions are spelled in reverse order to the later and usual spelling are of Central Asiatic origin. Zu-en falls in this class.
6 Deimel {Pantheon Bab.y p. 236), declares the meaning of the name unknown and suggests the possibility that Nannar may be for Nar-nar, evidently deriving his suggestion from the spelling followed twice in IV R, 9a, lines 6 and 18, where we find the spelling ilNa-an-nar. That this is, however, a syllabic spelling of a late scribe, is shown by the variants na-an-na-ru (V R, 52, 23a and I R, 70, iii, 18), and dSESki-wa-raBABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
243
Whether the Sumerians brought the god with them, or whether he was the pre-Sumerian spirit of the place whose worship they adopted, it is impossible now to tell. Historically his name first appears in the inscriptions of Gudea, who calls the marsh-land Nannar’s;* 1 it becomes frequent in the inscriptions of the third dynasty of Ur, and, on account of the importance and proximity of Ur, frequent in the inscriptions of kings of Isin and Larsa.2 By the time of the third dynasty of Ur his consort, who had probably been the goddess Nin-khursag, was usually called by the epithet Ningal, ‘the great lady’3 Nannar was regarded by Utu-khegal and Gimililishu as ‘king of the Anunnaki.’4 A number of the epithets applied to him are derived from the physical aspects of the moon. Thus Nur-Adad calls him the ‘crown of heaven and earth;’5 Warad-Sin, ‘the beautiful lord who shines in heaven,’6 and also ‘the lord whose head is exalted in great splendor, glorious in brilliance, whose eye radiates brightness and lightens all the lands.’7 It seems probable that each of the three races of Babylonia had worshipped the moon-god before they mingled in that land.
The sun-god, called in Sumerian Utu or Babbar, and in Akkadian Shamash, was widely worshipped in Babylonia from before the dawn of history. It is probable that homage was paid to this deity independently by all three races though as yet we have evidence con-
(Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler, I, 70, v, 9). The three endings -nart -na-ru, and -na-ra (the spelling na-an-na in K 2115, CT, XXV, 28, being clearly a scribal error) indicate that, if the word is Sumerian the root ended in r. It was, therefore, probably the word AR, ‘be bright/ ‘shine, (OBW, 408). Na-an-ar or Na-an-na-ar would then mean ‘he shines/ or ‘he shines on it/ which would give the name a perfectly good Sumerian etymology. On the other hand, if the god was brought to Ur by Semites, the name might be derived from the root namäru, ‘to shine’ and mean ‘lamp’ as Hinke holds; Cf. A New Boundary Stone of Nebuchadrezzar I from Nippur, Philadelphia, 1907 p. 290. Hinke quotes two texts, III R, 41 in which Sin is called ‘the lamp that dwells in the lofty heavens/ and I R 70 in which he is called ‘the lamp of heaven and earth.’
1	RISA, p. 227.
2	RISA, pp. 305 (Gimililishu), 311 (Gungunu), 313 (Nur-Adad), 315 and 317 (Sin-iddinam), 319, 325, 377, 383, 385 (Warad-Sin), and 389 (Rim-Sin).
3	Cf. the inscriptions and later kings in RISA, pp. 275, 289, 305, 311, 313, 361, 365, 371, 373, 375, 377, and 379.
4	RISA, p. 305 and 361.
6 RISA, p. 373.
6	Ibid., p. 377.
7	Ibid., p. 389.244
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
necting him only with the Sumerians and Akkadians.1 Eannatum calls Utu his king, and describes him as ‘king of abundant brilliance/ and numbers him among the gods who are to wreak vengeance on the men of Umma,2 if they break covenant. Lugalzaggisi,3 Sargon,4 Rimush,5 Shargalisharri,6 Idadu-Shushinak7 and others8 also count him amoiig the gjods who avenge ruthless disrespect of the rights of others. As the giver of the light of day, before whom evil slinks away, he became the god of justice, and Hammurabi represented the sun-god as giving him his code of laws.9 In the later historic period Sham ash was the god of Sippar, the successor of the city of Adgae, and of Larsa, both cities which apparently had large Semitic populations—Larsa in the earliest period of its history, Sippar in its later periods. As the sun-goddess was one of the prominent deities of Arabia, it is probable that the predominance of the worship of this deity in these cities is due to Semitic influence. As in the case of the moon, the Semites had deified this celestial orb before the dawn of history. In Babylonia, however, the goddess had become a god before our documents were written.
The earliest datable reference to the sun-god of Larsa is in the inscription of Lugalzaggisi, who calls Larsa the city beloved by Utu (Shamash).10 During the period of the kings of Larsa, Shamash was of course honored by them as the chief deity of their city. Nur-Adad regarded himself as ‘the conquering prince of Shamash/11 while Sin-iddinam calls Shamash ‘king of heaven and earth.’12
At Agade (Sippar) Shamash was a god whose consort was Aa, later defined as Malkatu. Manishtusu rebuilt their temple and
1	Unless the fact that the mythical prehistoric king, Meskingasir, is called a son of Shamash (RISA, p. 341) may be taken as a survival of a myth of the Central Asiatic race.
2	RISA, p. 29, and 31.
3	Ibid., p. 101.
4	Ibid., p. 107.
6 Ibid., p. 127.
6	Ibid., p. 145.
7	Ibid., pp. 157, 159.
* Cf. Ibid., p. 137.
9 Cf. Délégation en Perse, IV, pi. 3.
i« RISA, p. 99.
11 Ibid., p. 373.
vibid., p. 375.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
245
doubled the daily offerings. The name of the consort, Aa, is a Sumerian writing meaning ‘waters.’ In many of the early seals the sun-god is pictured with two streams of water flowing from his hands,1 as though he were the giver of water. As the rivers of Babylonia begin to give their fertilizing overflow in the spring-time as the power of the sun increases, because it melts the accumulated snows on the mountains of Armenia, it was natural for the goddess of waters to be associated with Shamash and in time to become his consort. As Shamash was regarded as a king,2 it was natural that she should be, in time, called Malkatu, ‘counsellor’ or ‘queen.’ Although the origins of the god defy close analysis, those of the goddess appear to be distinctly Babylonian.3
Another deity that was a personification of the sky, and therefore of a general character, was Anu. The name is Sumerian, but his earliest local habitation appears to have been in the Semitic town of Erech, where he was regarded as the father of the goddess Ishtar.4 Deimel is of the opinion that the earliest Semitic name for him was ilu,5 which was in writing indicated by the picture of a star, which was also the Sumerian ideograph for an, ‘heaven,’ and that this orthographic identity led to the adoption by the Semites of the Sumerian name for the god, and the fusion of the two. Such a process certainly seems probable. Anu appears first in the list of deities worshipped at Surippak. In the historical texts he is first mentioned by Lugalzaggisi, king of Erech, who calls himself ‘priest of Anu,’6 and who regards the herds as the property of that god.7 Several later rulers claim to be priests of Anu,8 and Sargon says that Kish was, like the bull of Anu, exalted over the dead.9 Like the sun-god and moon-god Anu seems to have been generally worshipped after
1	Cf. Ward, Seal Cylinders of Western Asia, p. 99.
2	Cf. RISA, pp. 29, 31, and 375.
3	The reference to Shamash as The great lion’ (RISA, p. 315), is doubtless a mere simile. It is not to be regarded as a survival of totemism.
4	Cf. the Gilgamesh Epic, Tablet VI.
5	Pantheon Babylonicum, p. 50 f.
6	RISA, p. 97.
7	Ibid., p. 99.
8	Sargon, RISA, 101; Manishtusu, ibid., p. 131; Naram-San, ibid., p. 139; Ur-Ningir-su, ibid., p. 265; Gimil-Sin calls himself counsellor or vicegerent of Anu, ibid., p. 295; while Damiq-ilishu calls himself The shepherd favored of Anu,’ ibid., p. 391.
9	Ibid., p. 119246
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
the time of Lugalzaggisi. Mention is made of him by various kings of Agade and Kish,1 by later rulers of Lagash,2 by members of the third dynasty of Ur,3 by kings of Isin and Larsa.4 At Lagash Bau and Gatumdug were regarded as his daughters,5 while Ningish-zida shared his secrets.6 At Larsa Ninsianna was said to be his first-born child.7 At various periods he was regarded as one of the deities who avenged wrongs and established justice,8 and in the period of the kings of Larsa he was placed at the head of the pantheon.9 In due time he was given a consort An turn, who was, in different places, identified as time passed with different goddesses10 and so tended to absorb into herself the personalities of Nina, Ninkhursag, Ishtar, and other goddesses. The pair Anu and Antum figured in Babylonian and Assyrian religion to the latest times.
One other deity of the early Babylonian period who was widely worshipped, was Adad, the Semitic weather-god. Among the early Sumerians the functions of the weather-god were performed by Enlil, who is frequently called The loud thunderer.’11 Manishtusu, of the Semitic dynasty of Kish, is the first to mention Adad,12 and the god is worshipped by Anu-banini of Lulubu,13 and a ruler of Seichan.14 Ideographically his name was written by the sign IM, which originally pictured a sail and was the symbol for wind. Among the Arurti the sign was doubled apparently for intensity,15 and the im-im became
1	RISA, pp. 101, 111, 119, 131, and 139.
2	Ur-Bau, RISA, pp. 175, 177, 179; Gudea, ibid., pp. 187, 189, 191, 193, 197, 199, 201, 207, 215, 229, 231, 235, 253, and 255; Ur-Ningirsu, ibid., p. 265.
3	Ur-Nammu, RISA, p. 273; Bur-Sin, ibid., p. 293; Gimil-Sin, ibid. p. 295.
4	Damiq-ilishu, RISA, p. 391; Sin-iddinam, ibid., p. 317; Warad-Sin, ibid., p. 321; Rim-Sin, ibid., pp. 327, 329, 389.
5	RISA, pp. 175, 177, 179, 189, 191, 193,197,199, 201, 207, 293.
6	Ibid., p. 255.
7	Ibid., p. 321.
8	In the reign of Sargon (RISA, p. Ill); Sin-iddinam, {ibid., p. 317) and Rim-Sin, (ibid., pp. 327 and 329).
9	RISA, pp. 317, 327, 329.
10	Cf. e.g., CT, XXIV, i, 27b and 18, 4-10c.
11	Cf. RISA, pp. 51, 67.
12	Ibid., p. 135.
13	Ibid., pp. 151.
14	Ibid., p. 168.
15	CT, XXV, 40, 43. Arura was a city of the land of Tummi; cf. Reallexikon fur Assyriologie, I, 160a.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
247
in time Mermer.1 This gave rise to the variants Immer (a form that appears in the name of Nur-Immer, king of Larsa)2 and Ini-mir.3 By the time of Gudea his worship appears to have been among the Sumerians of Lagash, where he had taken over from Enlil the function of thundering.4 By the Kassite period Sin, Shamash, and Adad had been formed into a triad.5 In the land of Arapkha his feast was celebrated with that of Shamash.6 He was a weather-god pure and simple. Adad is the Babylonian form of the West Semitic name Hadad. In Babylonia and Assyria his worship continued as long as the civilization endured. In Assyria the god was frequently known as Ramman,7 from ramdnu, To thunder.’
Turning now to the deities of special cities, it is most instructive to begin with those of the city of Lagash, the inscriptional material from which is most abundant and furnishes us with most information. At the head of the pantheon of Lagash stood the god Ningirsu, whose name means ‘Lady of Girsu/ a name which reveals the fact that further back in prehistoric time when Girsu, the dominant borough or section of Lagash, was first settled, its deity was a goddess. From what we have previously learned of the Sumerians and their earth-goddess,8 we conjecture that, when they first settled at Girsu, they brought the worship of Ninkhursag, the earth-goddess, with them; that in time they applied to her the epithet, ‘Lady of Girsu/ and that still later the constant use of this epithet differentiated in their minds the patroness of Girsu from Ninkhursag, so that the two were regarded as separate deities. Still later in the warlike exigencies of the life of the city, Ningirsu came to be regarded as a god, and as a masculine deity was thereafter worshipped as long as Lagash flourished.
1	CT. XXV, 20, 8b.
2	Cf. RISA, p. 373 and SAK, p. 209.
3	CT, XXV, 20, 7b.
4	In Cylinder A, xxvi, 21, Gudea, in speaking of the creaking of the hinges of the great doors of the temple he had built, says they “creaked like the god IM (or Adad). who is judge in heaven.” Cf. RISA, p. 233.
5	Sometimes Sharru (the king, i.e., Marduk) replaced Sin as in KB, III, 151; and sometimes Ishtar replaced Adad; cf. VR, 33.
6	RISA, p. 339.
7	See the proper names ilRa-man-iddin-apla and uRa-man-ib-ni, Johns, Assyrian Deeds and Documents, nos. 269 and 298.
8	See above pp. 228 and 234.248
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
The oldest known document which refers to Ningirsu is the prehistoric document discovered by Sarzec,1 which records the building of a primitive sanctuary at Girsu.2 In this document Ningirsu is said to be the priest or enchanter of Girsu,3 but no indication is given as to whether the transformation from a goddess to a god had yet taken place. The same is true of the inscription of king Enk-hegal,4 the document which next mentions Ningirsu, but by the time of Eannatum, Ningirsu had clearly become a masculine deity. He is anthropomorphically conceived and is believed to be of gigantic size.5 He is the chief deity of the city, who delimits its boundaries and watches over them.6 He is especially fond of the fertile field of Guedin7 on which the city relies for much of its food-supply. He is the king of the city; the various rulers are his viceroys who do not think of making war without his authorization.8 While “very wise in battle,”9 it is constantly remembered that the god Enlil (the god of the Asiatic race who first occupied the land) is the primary deity of the territory, for Ningirsu is regularly called “the hero (or warrior) of Enlil.”10 Ningirsu rules Lagash and fights its battles, but after all he is ruling and fighting for the god of this earlier race who is recognized as the rightful divine ruler of all the land. As god of the land he causes his net to descend on its enemies,11 the men of Umma; he gives Urukagina his kingship;12 he opens the way for Gudea from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.13 From prehistoric time to Gudea, rulers built and rebuilt his temple.14 In this temple he reigned as king. In the prosperous time of Gudea various subordinate deities were also worshipped there. They were
1	Découvertes en Chaldêe, pi. lbis.
2	See the writer’s translation in JAQS, XLII, 338-342.
3	Ibid., p. 340.
4	RISA, p. 13 ff.
5	Ibid., p. 25.
6	Ibid., pp. 57, 59, and 65.
7	Ibid., p. 33.
8	Ibid., p. 25.
9	Ibid., p. 233.
10	Ibid., pp. 41, 51, 53, 55, 57, 67, 73, 173, 257, etc.
11	Ibid., p. 29.
12	Ibid., p. 89.
13	Ibid., p. 183.
14	JAOS, XLII, 338-342 and RISA, 17, 19, 21, 23, 63 and 205-237.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
249
believed to have taken their stations at the command of Ningirsu1 and performed their functions under his direction. As a king accomplishes his work through subordinates, so Ningirsu ruled through these various deities.
Notwithstanding Ningirsu’s transformation into a god, he still was believed to exercise the functions of fertility. At the great spring festival his marital union with his consort Bau was believed to cause the fertilizing waters to rise2 and irrigate the land to bring forth its fruit.
The standard of Lagash was surmounted by the figure of a black bird.3 This bird was called “the divine black, bright storm-bird”4 and is, in the inscriptions, frequently identified with Ningirsu. Mythologically, therefore, Ningirsu was connected with the storm-cloud. Like all deities, Ningursu was also interested in the establishment of justice.5 He was, however, the local god of Lagash, and with the decline and fall of the city his worship declined and ceased.
The consort of Ningirsu was the goodess Bau, whose name means ‘The producer of vegetation.’ Bau was a goddess of fertility, whose marriage with Ningirsu was reënacted at the beginning of each year.6 The first month of the year was called the £Month of the feast of Bau/7 and the materials for the feast were designated nig-sal-us-sa, the ‘bride price’ or ‘dowry of Bau.’8 At the new year’s festival next after the completion of the temple of Eninnu by Gudea the marital union of Ningirsu and Bau is frankly described.9 In consequence of it, the fertilizing waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates rose in abundance and good crops were assured. Ba-u, ‘The producer of vegetation,’ is clearly an epithet. The original name of the goddess must have been something else. Two or three possibilities must be recognized. If Bau were a native Sumerian deity, she originated
1	RISA, p. 243 ff.
2	Ibid., p. 251.
3	Découvertes en Chaldée, pi. 3.
4	Cf., e.g., RISA, p. 197.
5	Ibid., p. 253.
6	Ibid., pp. 193, 239.
7	See the references collected by the writer in JOAS, XXXI, 251 ff., and XXXIII, 1 ff., and 297 ff.
8	Cf. RISA, pp. 193 and 197. In the last mentioned passage it is called “the joy of the hearts of Ningirsu and Bau.”
9	RISA, p. 251.250
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
from the bifurcation of the Sumerian earth-goddess, Ninkhursag, and represents the surviving feminine functions of that goddess after another part or element of her had, under the epithet Ningirsu, become a god. Another possibility is that Bau is an epithet of Nina, the goddess of that Asiatic race whose settlement adjoined Girsu and who occupied the site before the coming of the Sumerians.1 Still another possibility is that Bau is an epithet of the Semitic goddess Ashdar (Ennin). This last possibility is suggested by the fact that Bau, like Ashdar, is said to be a daughter of Anu.2 Of these three possibilities, the first is the most probable. The relationship with Anu probably came into the mythology from the influence of the neighboring quarter of Lagash, Erim, where Ennin was the principal goddess.3
The worship of Bau can be traced from the time of Ur-Nina to the fall of Lagash.4 While she had shrines of her own,5 she also occupied the temple of Ningirsu as his wife.6 Seven other deities were regarded as their children.7 One of her shrines was called The place of heart’s ease.’8 She was regarded as a mother.9 By the time of the third dynasty of Ur she was also worshipped under the name of Gula,10 or 'The great one.’ Gula gradually came to be regarded as a separate goddess, and as such was worshipped in other parts of Babylonia long after the fall of Lagash.11 Gula, in different places, appears also to have absorbed the qualities of other earth-goddesses besides Bau.12 Bau was also worshipped as a goddess in other contiguous parts of Babylonia: in Drehem, during the third dynasty of Ur,13 in Nippur in the Kassite period,14 and in other
1	See above, ch. Ill, p. 63, and below p. 256 f.
2	RISA, pp. 193, 199, 201, and 203.
3	Cf. below p. 260.
4	Cf. RISA, pp. 23, 71, 75, 81, 173, 179, 183, 189, 191, 231, 239, 265, and 283.
5	Cf. RISA, pp. 73, 77, 175, and 233.
* Ibid., pp. 239, and 251.
7 Ibid., p. 247.
3 Ibid., p. 233.
*Ibid., p. 283.
10	Cf. HLC, II, 8, 56, v, 5; cf. IV R, 32, 39 and var. Another Gula was at the same time worshipped at Drehem; cf. Genouillac, Tablettes de Drehem, Paris, 1911, 4682, 5; 5482, ii, 5; Langdon, Tablets from the Archives of Drehem, 47, lv, i; 51: 14.
11	Cf. e.g., Strassmaier, Alphebetische Verzeichniss, nos. 6746 and 8920.
12	Cf. the references collected by Deimel, Pantheon Babylonicum, p. 88a.
13	Cf. Genouillac, op. cit., 5498, iv, 17.
14	Cf. Clay, Personal Names from Cuneiform Inscriptions of the Cassite Period, p. 63.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
251
places in neo-Babylonian times.1 Ebeling,2 following the suggestion of an old Assyrian syllabary,3 contends that Bau was identical with a goddess Baba, who was worshipped at Fara earlier than Bau was worshipped at Lagash,4 and even that Bau was pronounced Baba. That the two goddesses were developed out of the same Sumerian or Asiatic earth-goddess, the present writer does not doubt, but that their names were pronounced the same is highly questionable.5 Similarity of function does not prove identity of name, and the equivalences of the syllabaries usually convey to us the theological equivalences of theologians, not identity either of name or of historical origin.6 The goddess Baba was also worshipped in Assyria at a much later period.7
Another goddess that was probably a form of Ninkhursag, was Gâ-tûm-dûg, ‘She who brings good to the house.’ As Bau was the producer of food, so Gatumdug appears to have been the protectress of the dwelling and the provider for its needs. While our chief knowledge of her worship comes from Lagash, it was also known at Surippak.8 At Lagash various rulers, from Ur-Nina9 to Gudea,10 built her temple, and Lugalzaggisi destroyed it.11 She was called ‘mother of Lagash’12 and ‘holy mother of Lagash.’13 Gudea calls
1	Tallquist, Neubabylonisches Namenbuch, p. 232.
2	Reallexikon der Assyriologie, I, 432 ff.
3	KAVI, p. 46, 14, ab.
4	Cf. Deimel, Schultexte am Fara, 12760, xi, and p. 10.*
5	Jensen believes that in this divine name the u was pronounced ba; Cf. Thureau-Dangin, Les homophones sumérienne, p. 40. Thureau-Dangin regards it as doubtful {ibid.). The present writer regards it as more than doubtful.
6	True, the syllabary in question (KAVI, p. 46) seems in part to differ from others, since lines 6-9 seem to give various ways of expressing the name of the god Zamama, but here it is evident that some of the forms are abbreviated and that some of them are bad spellings of the name with the Semitic determinative ilu. Doubtless Ba-ba The begetress,’ was another name for the mother-goddess, just as later Zar-ba-ni-tu was another name for her which meant essentially the same thing. It does not follow, however, that Ba-u, The food-producer’ was pronounced Ba-ba, and was not a distinct name.
7	Cf. KAJI, No. 178, 15 and 19; also 279, 4.
8	Deimel, Schultexte aus Fara, no. 12760, ix.
9	RISA, pp. 17, 19, and 21.
10	Ibid., pp. 257, 259, and 263. The other rulers who rebuilt it were Eannatum {ibid., 47) and Entemena {ibid., 51 and 67). It existed still in the time of the third dynasty of Ur; cf. HLC, I, 9, 16, v.
11	Ibid., p. 89.
12	Ibid., p. 51.
™Ibid., p. 225.252
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
himself The child brought forth by Gatumdug/1 and claims to have been born in her temple.2 Her temple is sometimes said to have been in Girsu,3 and sometimes in Uruazagga.4 As Uruazagga was the sacred part of Girsu, both statements were true. Outside of Surippak and Lagash no trace of this goddess has as yet been found. Her worship would seem to have been confined to southern Babylonia. Her functions of motherhood appear to have been identical with those of Ninkhursag. It seems safe, therefore, to assume that she was a phase of that goddess.
Several other deities of Lagash were closely associated with Nin-girsu and Bau, being said to be children of Ningirsu or of them both. One of these was Gal-alim, whose name meant ‘Door-ram.’5 Gudea says of this god that, in building the temple Eninnu, Galalim ‘di-rected his way’6—a phrase that attributes to him something of the functions of a Lamassu, or guardian deity. We suspect, therefore, that Gal-alim originated in the personification of a sphinx with the head of a ram which guarded a door at the temple of Eninnu, as the bull and lion deities later guarded those of the Assyrians. In the time of Gudea the chief function of Gal-alim appears to have been that of a cup-bearer or butler to the god Ningirsu.7 Nevertheless other functions were attributed to him. Urukagina speaks of him as the enchanter, The mighty one of heaven and earth/8 and as the ‘great high priest of heaven and earth/9 while Gudea, in two passages, tells us that it was Gal-alim that invested him with the scepter.10 Along with Dunshagga he is said to be The child beloved by Ningirsu.’11 We have no trace of the worship of Gal-alim later than the reign of Shulgi, of the last dynasty of Ur,12 though a
'Ibid., p. 191.
2 Ibid., p. 223.
2 Ibid., p. 259.
4	Ibid., p. 263.
5	Cf. OBW, nos. 87 and 374.
6	RISA, p. 223.
I	Ibid., p. 243 (col. v, 21 — vi, 8), where it is said that G&l-alim pours wine and brings food to Ningirsu until that god is satisfied.
8	RISA, pp. 73, 75 and 77.
9	Ibid., pp. 87.
10	Ibid., pp. 183 and 191.
II	Ibid., pp. 243 and 259.
12	RISA, p. 269.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
253
late syllabary equates him with Anu.1 This is clearly a speculation of the theologians or mythologers.
Another deity, associated with Gal-alim as a companion,2 and also said to be a child of Ningirsu,3 was Dunshagga, sometimes written Dunshaggana.4 In the earlier inscriptions Dunshagga is a masculine deity and is called ‘king,’5 while in later inscriptions the deity has become feminine and is called ‘mother.’6 This development reverses the process by which Ningirsu became masculine. How are we to account for it? Probably it came about through his association with Gal-alim. As Gal-alim was a god and the two were associated together as guardian deities, it came to be thought that Dunshagga (‘The favorable dun-animal’) was his feminine spouse, as Bau was the spouse of Ningirsu. From the form and probable origin of the sign dun, one is tempted to think it pictured a swine7 and that in the name of the god it pictured a boar as alirn pictured a ram. What is actually said in the inscriptions about this animal leaves us, it is generally thought, in some doubt as to its real nature.8 In the judgment of the present writer the ¿fom-animal was clearly a swine.
1	CT, XXIV, 19, 15a.
2	RISA, pp. 73, 87, and 189.
3	Ibid., p. 201.
4	Ibid., pp. 189 and 201.
5	Ibid., p. 81. The deity was masculine, then, as late as the time of Urukagina.
6	Ibid., p. 191.
7	Cf. OBW, no. 327 and Deimel, Keilschrift Palaeographie, Rome, 1929, no. 63.
8	There is much confusion of thought as to the nature of the dun-animal. Langdon states quite positively that the dun-animal was the bos bubalis and that it became extinct in Babylonia about 2600 B.C. (see Sir John Marshall’s Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, London, 1931 II, 453). No authority is given for the statement. If it is because we sometimes find the expression gud-dun, ‘ox-dun’ (Nik. 207), it must be said that we also find ansu-dun, ‘ass-dun’ (RTC, 50), and lu-dun, ‘man-dun’ (Nik. 15). The fact is that dun in these expressions has a figurative meaning. In the case of the ox and the ass, it means ‘broken to the yoke,’ or sometimes ‘large;’ (cf. Gud. Cyl. A, vii, 20 in RISA, p. 211 and Cyl. B, ix, 19 and xv, 12-14 in RISA, 245 and 251). Similarly ia-dun (RTC, 62 and 63) is not butter, but lard as ia-sah is in the Hittite laws. The name Nin-dun-ama-mu (Hussey, Sumerian Tablets in the Harvard Semitic Museum, I, 1912, no. 23, i, 11), means ‘A noble lady is my mother;’ it has nothing to do with the dun-animal. In all these uses the sign is employed figuratively as it is in the name of the king Shulgi. For its various figurative or ideographic uses cf. OBW, II, no. 327. When this is recognized the difficulties set forth by Price in his article on the dun-animal (JAOS, XXXIII, 402-404) disappear. The animal was a swine as the picture of it clearly indicates. The term dun for swine became obsolete about 2600 B.C. and was replaced by sah. When this is recognized the whole matter becomes clear.254
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
The worship of Dunshagga was flourishing in the reign of Ur-Nina, who built a temple for him in Girsu;1 it then disappears until the reign of Urukagina.2 During the reigns of Eannatum and Entemena he is not mentioned, but these monarchs say repeatedly that their deity (meaning, apparently, their guardian deity) is Dun-mush(?).3 The reading of the second element of the name is not certain, as the sign has an unusual form,4 but it is probable, for the reasons mentioned, that this deity is identical with Dunshagga, and was perhaps pronounced ‘Dun-shagga.’ Gudea, when he tells how this deity took her stand by the side of Gal-alim in the rebuilt temple of Eninnu, says5 that her hand grasped the seven-headed boomerang; that she took “the tongue-shaped spear, the weapon ‘Black-wrath,’ the storm-club, the weapon ‘Destructive-wrath,’ her destructive battle weapons, to put to flight like water all the countries inhabited by enemies of Enlil.” Putting all these facts together, we conclude that Dunshagga was the spirit of a serpent-shaped ¿^-animal-headed boomerang, which because of its services in battle, came to be regarded as a guardian deity or spirit and so was associated with Gal-alim, and consequently transformed from a god to a goddess.6 This appears to be the history of the deity in Lagash. It was also worshipped in Surippak,7 as was Dun-mush8(?) but we have no means of knowning its history there. Perhaps this deity is the same as Dun-pa-e (‘The dun-scepter which goes out’), a deity worshipped at Surippak9 and widely in later times,10 a god that was identified with Marduk by later Babylonian theologians.11 This is made probable by the general disappearance of Dunshagga after the time of Gudea.12
1RISA, pp. 15, 17.
2 Ibid., pp. 73, 77.
8	Ibid., pp. 27, 35, 37, 41, 43, 45, 47, 51, 53, 55, 61, 65, 67.
4 Cf. OBW, no. 328 on p. 168 and Deimel, Liste der archaischen Keilschriftzeichen aus Fara, Leipzig, 1922, no. 442.
6	RISA, p. 243.
6	This development was not clear to me when translating the texts published in RISA. I then supposed that a goddess had been changed into a god.
7	Deimel, Schultexte aus Fara, no. 12760, xiii.
8	Ibid., no. 12760, vii.
9	Ibid., no. 12644, iv and no. 12625, v and rev. iii.
10	For references cf. Deimel Pantheon Babylonicum, no. 781.
11	Ibid.
12	The name occurs once in a text, from the Library of Ashurbanipal, published by Macmillan; cf. BA, V, p. 680, 1.16.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
255
The shrine of Dunshagga was called The place of wailing.’ Why this name was given, can only be conjectured.
Ningishzida was worshipped enthusiastically in Lagash in the time of Gudea and the third dynasty of Ur,1 but appears not to have been prominent there in earlier time.2 This deity was known at Surippak earlier than Gudea,3 and his cult seems to have spread from there to Lagash and Drehem.4 The name Nin-gish-zid-da means ‘Lady of the tree of life,’ and was doubtless originally an epithet of one of the early earth-goddesses defined as the spirit of the palm tree. By the time of Shulgi the goddess had become a god and was called ‘king.’5 Probably this had occurred as early as the time of Gudea, for Gudea speaks of him as a sun-deity6 and as ‘sharer of the secrets of Anu.’7 Once he seems to be the spouse of Bau.8 Perhaps he was there regarded as another form of Nin-girsu. In another passage he is said to be the son of Nin-azu,9 ‘The lady-physician,’ perhaps a title of the goddess Bau. Gudea built a temple for Ningishzida in Girsu,10 and brought him and Bau into their temple in Uruazagga11—probably the same temple. Gudea represents himself as son of Ningishzida,12 says that Ningishzida exalted him as leader of all men,13 and that, when he was making brick for the building of Eninnu, the god Ningishzida held his hand.14 In later mythology Ningishzida plays a conspicuous part,15 though it
1	Our knowledge of his popularity during this dynasty comes from proper names. In HLC at least sixteen persons bearing the name Ur-dNingishzida are listed (cf. HLC, III, p. 22), and in the Harvard collection, ten persons; (cf. M. I. Hussey, Sumerian Tablets in the Harvard Semitic Museum, II, Cambridge, 1915, p. 43.
2	The writer has found the name of this deity in no document from Lagash earlier than Gudea.
3	Cf. Deimel, Schultexte aus Fara, no. 12760, iv.
4	Cf. Genouillac, Tablettes de Drehem, no. 5498, i, 10 and v, 291.
5	RISA, p. 285.
6	The passage reads: “The sun which rose from the fruitful earth is thy god Ningishzida, who, like the sun, rises for thee out of the earth.” (See RISA, p. 209.)
7	RISA, p. 255.
*Ibid., p. 195.
9	Ibid., p. 201.
10	Ibid., pp. 201, 203, 257.
11	Ibid., p. 195.
12	Ibid., p. 255.
lzIbid., p. 183.
14	RISA, p. 223.
15	See the summary in DeimePs Pantheon Babylonicum, no. 2481, (6-14).256
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
is not always clear just what that part is.1 He is sometimes identified with Tammuz,2 who was himself a god of the tree of life, so that, if the name was first applied to a non-Semitic deity, as seems probable, an element of Semitic origin was later fused with the earlier conceptions of the deity.
Such seems to have been the origin of the principal deities of the borough of Girsu. Space forbids us to enter upon a discussion of the many lesser deities. Some of them, which were worshipped also in other localities, will be discussed a little later. We turn next to the borough of Nina, which was shown in Chapter III to have been founded by the Asiatic-Elamite race,3 and not by Sumerians. Its goddess, the fish-goddess Nina,bore the same name as the city. This statement, however, needs some justification.
Because the Chicago syllabary defines three kinds of fish designated by the sign of this goddess followed by the word for fish (KHA) by the three words na-an-she, ni-na-a, and si-ra-ra,4 it is sometimes assumed (apparently because Nanshe is placed first) that this was the name of the goddess. So far from this being the case, it can, I think, be shown that na-an-she is in all probability a scribal error. Another syllabary5 defines the sign by which our goddess is written as na-mash-she, ‘a school of fish.’ The scribe of the Chicago syllabary, we believe, in writing this, accidentally added an extra wedge, making an instead of mash. Nina was a fish-goddess; Sirara6 was a kind of fish, and a school of fishes could be designated by the same sign, but the Asiatic name of the goddess was Nina.
Hommel7 has endeavored to show that this goddess was called in Sumerian Eshkhana or Ishkhara. While there is no indubitable
1	The inferences of Deimel, e.g., do not always seem to be borne out by the original texts.
2	Cf. Zimmern’s Tammuz, 708, 21.
3	See above p. 76.
4	Cf. Deimel, Sumerisches Lexikon, no. 20011, p. 421. The cuneiform authority is the Chicago syllabary, published AJSL, XXXIII, pp. 169-199. The lines in question are 158-160 on p. 194.
5	Published in CT, XXXIX, 46. Cf. line 25.
6	AJSL, XXXIII, 194, 160.
7	Cf. his, Die Schwurgottin Esh-hanna und ihre Kreis Paris, 1912. A brief statement of his argument is given in DeimePs Pantheon Babylonicum, p. 223.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
257
proof of this, there was a goddess Ishkhara,1 who was, perhaps, Nina under a Sumerian name. That Eshkhara was not her original name is proved by the fact that the same ideogram was employed for writing the city of Nineveh, where the original name survived. The oldest form of the Sumerian El-ha-ra,2 ‘House for a fish/ was derived from the ideograph by which the Asiatic people expressed the name of their goddess.3 This was in time corrupted to Ishkhara.4 The same thing happened at Sippar, where the same goddess was worshipped. In this last-mentioned city her worship survived, as contracts and proper names attest, until the period of the first dynasty of Babylon, and even to Kassite time.5
The worship of Nina at Lagash is attested by all the documents from Ur-Nina6 to the third dynasty of Ur.7 As she was Ur-Nina5s patron goddess, he was particularly devoted to her worship, building her temple8 and storehouse9 and a house for her hierodouloi.10 She was a goddess of fertility, possessed boundary canals,11 and, as Ishkhara, was remembered until latest times as ‘the queen of boundary ditches.12 Grain was thought to be her possession,13 and one of her
1	Cf. Bezold’s Catalogue, K11300, 3d; CT, XXIV, 18, 7b; CT. XXV, 8, rev. 10 CT. IV, 48a, 5; CT. VIII, 43b, 19; CT. II, 4, 22; Meissner, Altbabylonische Privatrecht 37, 20; 103, 20; 104, 21; and 96, 5 and 13; BE, XV, 188, v, 30; UMBS, II, 2, 13 and 40; and II r, 60, 14a. Cf. also Chiera’s Lexical Texts from Nippur, 124, vii, 15.
2	Cf. CT. IV, 48a, 5.
3	That the Sumerians so treated the sign is proved by the name that the later scribes gave to it, sa-es-se-su-ku-a-i-di—a combination of Sumerian and Akkadian, meaning ‘Know that what is in the house is a fish.’ The possibility of this origin of the sign is admitted by Deimel; op. cit. p. 223 f.
If it seems unlikely to anyone that the Sumerian mind should have thought in this way, a modern Iraqian parallel may be adduced. Victor Co. Victrola needles, which have been widely advertised by the picture of a dog listening to a victrola, underneath which is now the familiar legend “His master’s voice,” are actually sold in Iraq today under the name Abu-el-kelb needles! (i. e, Master-of-the-dog needles.)
4	Of course HommePs contention that Ishkhara was derived from the name of the central Asiatic goddess Eshkhanna, whose name appears in Cilicia, may also be true.
5	The references to these have already been given in n9.
6	RISA, pp. 15, 17, 21.
7	Ibid., pp. 279 and 283.
9	Ibid., 15, 17, 19, and 21.
9 Ibid., p. 17. The phrase is there translated ‘the great enclosure.’
10	RISA, p. 19.
11	Ibid., pp. 61, 63, 65.
12II R, 60, 14a.
13 RISA, pp. 59 and 61.258
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
temples was called ‘The house of the date-well (or abyss)/1 A special canal led to her city Nina,2 in which she was particularly interested.3 That a fish-goddess should be interested in canals, was, of course, most natural. Nina was, also, the goddess of oracles.4 The temple in which she was believed to give her oracles most frequently was named Sirara or Esirara;5 hence one of her favorite titles was oracle-priestess, lady of Sirara.6 Closely connected with this characteristic of her was the belief that she was especially wise and could give understanding to her faithful devotees, or illuminate their hearts.7 Rulers of Lagash regularly claimed to have derived their wisdom from her, and Gudea takes his dream to her, first of all, for an interpretation.8 Doubtless it was in part her wisdom that led her devotees to call her The child of Eridu, i.e., Enki,’9 though it may have been in part because she was a water-deity as Enki was a land deity. As the centuries passed and the independent settlements which composed Lagash were fused into one city, it was forgotten that she was any less a Sumerian goddess than Ninkhursag, Bau, and Gatumdug, though the peculiar functions given to her by her origin among the Asiatic peoples clung to her until the city disappeared from history.
The texts from Lagash connect with Nina a goddess Ninmar, calling her the first-born child of Nina.10 Nin-mar was worshipped as early as the reign of Ur-Nina,11 who built her temple, and her worship can be traced down to the reign of Shulgi,12 who rebuilt it. In all the references to her in the tablets from Lagash her name is written Nin-Marki. As ki is the determinative for ‘land’ or ‘place,’ it follows that Mar was the name of a place. In the time of Sargon of Agade a considerable territory to the south of Lagash was called
1	Ibid., p. 67.
2	Ibid., p. 73.
Ubid., pp. 77, 79 and 85.
*Ibid., p. 207.
*Ibid., p. 208.
5 Ibid., pp. 23, 41, 45, 57, 65, and 173.
7 Ibid., p. 205.
*Ibid., p. 207.
9	Ibid., pp. 189 and 265.
10	Ibid., pp. 17 and 21.
*Ibid., p. 277.
12 Ibid., p.277.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
259
E-Nin-Mar or ‘Temple of Ninmar,’ for Sargon says of himself, “The temple of Ninmar he subjugated, its wall he destroyed, and all its country from Lagash unto the sea he subjugated.”1 Nin-Mar, ‘Lady of Mar/ is simply an epithet. The original name of the goddess was something else. The kinship of Nina asserted by Gudea2 and Ur-Ningirsu,3 suggest that Nin-mar may be Nina under another name. The goddess Ninmar was, however, known to the priests of Surippak at an earlier time,4 * and the relationship asserted by the rulers of Lagash may only signify that in their time Mar was a suburb of Lagash which adjoined the borough of Nina on the south.
Ninmar was, like Nina, a source of oracles, as she is called ‘the counsellor.’6 She was regarded as a gracious deity6 who could prolong life7 and was accordingly one of the goddesses of fertility. Her temple formed one of the strongly fortified positions of the pre-Sar-gonic time, for here Luenna, one of her priests, overthrew the Elamites.8 Although Sargon destroyed its walls,9 the fame of the region remained. In the time of Hammurabi one of the gates of Erech was named ‘The gate of Ninmar’10 (or of the land of Ninmar), and contracts were written and attested in this gate. It has sometimes been inferred that there was a temple of Ninmar at Erech11 and that she was one of the ‘oath deities,’ but the text may mean no more than that the eastern (or southeastern) gate of Erech was named for the region toward which it looked. The name of Ninmar lingered among the priests to later times, and in the syllabaries12 she is fancifully equated with other deities. Two passages in late hymns published by Reisner13 indicate that her worship continued to the Seleu-cid period, but the sources reveal nothing further about it.
1	RISA, p. 103 f.
2	Ibid., p. 189.
3	Ibid., p. 265.
4	Deimel, Schultexte aus Fara, no. 12626, iv.
6	RISA, p. 17.
*Ibid., pp. 173, 175, 265, 269.
7	Ibid., p. 361.
8	Ibid., p. 69.
9	Ibid., p. 105.
10	Meissner, Altbabylonische Privatrecht, no. 43, lines 6 and 26.
11	S. A. B. Mercer, The Oathin Babylonian and Assyrian Literature, Paris, 1912, p. 11.
12	Cf. CT, XXIV, 48, 11-17, and XXV, 27, K2117.
13	G. A. Reisner, Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen, Berlin, 1896, no. 49, 9 and 542, rev. 1 and 2.260
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Turning now to Erim, the remaining borough of Lagash, we find that its goddess was originally Ennin-Ishtar, and that it must have accordingly been a Semitic settlement. For this goddess Enanna-tum I built a storehouse in Erim,1 and Ur-Bau some centuries later built her temple there.2
The chief deity of Erim was Lugal-Erim. His name means ‘King of Erim’ and is clearly an epithet. If the settlement was Semitic and its goddess Ishtar, it follows that Lugal-Erim was but another name for Tammuz. Enannatum built a temple in Erim for this god,3 as did Entemena,4 who called himself ‘the brilliant son of Lugal-Erim/5 The wife of Lugalanda offered sacrifices to Lugal-Erim,6 and Lugalzaggisi destroyed his temple.7
In the time of Enannatum I a goddess called Amageshtinanna was worshipped at Erim.8 Her name, ‘Mother of the heavenly vine/ is clearly an epithet. The deity was a mother-goddess, whose sphere of fertility included more than the vine, for Ennanatum sacrificed to her ‘perfect cows and perfect calves/8 She is mentioned along with Lugal-Erim and was, apparently, his consort. By the time of Ur-Bau her name had been shortened to Geshtinanna, and her temple had been transferred to Girsu.9 He calls her ‘princess of the dark colored drink/ Apparently the goddess was Ennin-Ishtar figuring under another name. This inference is confirmed by the fact that a late hymn states that Dumuzi was ‘brother of Amamutinanna,10 which is another spelling for Amageshtinanna.11
Turning from Lagash to its northern neighbor, Umma, it has already been noted that Umma is a Semitic name for the Central Asiatic Gishkhu.12 Its deities bore Semitic names and the mythological statements concerning them imply a connection, racial or
1	RISA, p. 49.
2	Ibid,, p. 175.
3	RISA, p. 49.
4	Ibid., pp. 51 and 67.
5	Ibid., p. 55.
6	Ibid., p. 71.
7	Ibid., p. 91.
8	Ibid., p. 49.
9	Ibid., p. 175.
10	Reisner, Sumerisch-Babylonische Hymnen, no. 37, 20.
11	Cf. Zimmern, Tammuz, 707, n2, and BSGW, 1911, 117.
12	Cf. above, Ch. Ill, p. 61.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
261
political or both, with Erech. The deities of Umma were Shara and his consort Nisaba(sometimes given as Nidaba1). Shara bore the same relation to Umma that Ningirsu bore to Lagash. Umma was his beloved city;2 he defined its boundaries;3 he was its king.4 He was the 'son beloved of Ennin’5 and vicegerent of Anu6— statements which connect him with Erech. His name comes from a root which in Arabic means 'rise/ 'appear/7 Perhaps he is an offshoot of the Semitic Shamash.
The name of his consort Nisaba was written by a picture of cut heads of grain.8 She was clearly a grain goddess; perhaps originally a goddess of fertility who, by some epithet that had connected her particularly with grain, had, in the thought of her worshippers, identified her with grain. In the minds of some of the enemies of Umma she was regarded as more responsible for the actions of the inhabitants of that town than was her husband Shara. The citizen of Lagash, who wrote the lament over Lugalzaggisi’s destruction of that city, as he viewed the ruin and desecration of the sacred places of his city, wrote: "May Nisaba, his goddess, bear on her head his mortal sin!5’9 Lugalzaggisi called himself "the exalted man of Nisaba”10 and "the son borne by Nisaba.”11 Some centuries later, when Umma had been incorporated within the territories of Lagash, Gudea tells us that in a vision he saw Nisaba with the goddess Nina, and, when he asked Nina the name of this goddess, he received the following reply: "The maid whose stature, going forth from earth heaven received, whose hand bore a holy stylus, who bore the tablet of the favorable star, who raised a cry, is my sister Nisaba.”12 In this period Nisaba was thought to understand the meaning of numbers,13 and Gudea claims to have been given understanding by
1	CT, XI, 49, 15.
2	RISA, p. 99.
3	Ibid., pp. 57 and 61.
*Ibid., p. 275.
bIbid., p. 283 and 295.
*Ibid., p. 295.
7	thdra ithmirun).
8	OBW, no. 324. The sign pictured ears of grain severed from the stalk.
9	RISA, p. 91.
™Ibid., p. 97.
11	Ibid., p. 99.
12	Ibid., p. 209.
13	Ibid., p. 225.262
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
her.1 Deimel infers from the fact that she is called ‘maid’ (ki-el) , in the passage quoted above from Gudea, that she was a ‘virgin’ goddess.2 The term was, however, frequently applied to Ishtar,3 who was not a virgin in our modern understanding of the word. The term means ‘servant-girl’ and was not an epithet of chastity. It is probable that in the time of Gudea she was worshipped at Lagash as an unmarried goddess.
Once the worship of the grain-spirit had become popular, it spread and was perpetuated. Gudea connected Nisaba with a star,3a showing that she had in his time begun to have celestial associations; he also regarded her as controlling writing and fate.3a Her worship was in ways, the details of which now escape us, perpetuated to the latest times. In the myth of Ea and Atarkhasis she is spoken of as the goddess by whose breast the fields during the night are whitened.4 In the syllabaries she is mentioned several times, and two or three Nisabas appear to be distinguished.5 Deimel thinks6 that some of these may have had different origins, but it is possible that the differentiation arose from the application of different epithets to the same goddess.7 Her name appears on boundary stones of the time of the Kassite and Pashe dynasties,8 and Nabopolassar mentions her with Nabu as though she were the consort of that god.9 In incantation texts of the Shurpu-series her name was employed,10 and it appears in Sumerian hymns copied in the Seleucid and Parthian periods.11 While it thus appears that the worship of the grain-
1	Ibid., p. 223.
2	Pantheon Babylonicum, p. 226.
3	Delitzsch, Sumerisches Glossar, p. 118.
3a RISA, p. 209.
4	KB, VI, p. 279.
5	CT, XV, 49, iii, 47 and 57; cf. Dhorme, Choixde textes religieux, Paris, 1907, p. 137.
6	Cf. CT, XXIV, 9, 31 and 32; also 23, 15-20b. She seems in this period to have been the consort of a god Khani (cf. CT, XXIV, 9, 30-32). Khani was an obscure deity of whom little is known; cf. Deimel, Pantheon, no. 1392.
7	Op. cit., p. 227.
8	Cf. Hinke, New Boundary Stone of Nebuchadrezzar I from Nippur, Philadelphia, 1907, p. 227.
9	Cf. OBI, no. 82, ii, 14, 15, and Langdon, Neubabylonischen Königinschriften, Leipzig, 1912, p. 62, line 16.
10	See Zimmern, Beiträge der Kentniss der babylonischen Religion, Leipzig, 1901, p. 42, 19.
11	Reisner, Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen, no. 9, rev. 24 and no. 48, 40; for translations, Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, Paris, 1909, p. 84,24 and p. 156,40.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
263
spirit found a place in ancient Babylonia from prehistoric time onward, there is no evidence that it held the large place which Frazer believed that it held in Europe.
Turning now to northern Babylonia, we find at the city of Kish a god Zamama (whose name has in recent years been erroneously read Zababa1)—a name which, as Deimel pointed out,2 is neither Sum-merian nor Semitic. It now appears that he was a god of the people from central Asia who were at Kish before the coming of either the Semites or the Sumerians. Documents from Boghaz Koi have revealed the fact that he was the god of at least two cities in the region dominated by the great Hittite empire during the fourteenth century B.C.3 These cities were Ellaya and Arziya.4 The substratum of the population of this region was, like that of Mesopotamia and Elam, of the same general Asiatic stock,5 and the preservation of the divine name in that region, taken together with the impossibility of explaining the name either from Sumerian or Semitic, indicates that Zamama was a god of these Asiatic folk. At Kish Zamama was reverenced by Utug,6 one of the earliest kings known to us, and by Ashdunierim, a monarch who ruled perhaps a thousand years later.7 Ashdunierim speaks of Zamama as ‘my lord, my gracious ally/ and associates him with thie goddess Ishtar as though the two formed a divine pair. Warad-Sin of Larsa, who built a shrine for Zamama in Ur, calls him ‘hero, exalted son of Enlil, the divine lion who directs a watchful eye, the helper of my weapons’
1	This reading was first proposed by Clay (JAOS, XXXVII, 1917, pp. 328, 329), and although criticized by Luckenbill in AJSL, XXXV, 57 ff., was defended by Clay in his Empire of the Amorites, New Haven, 1919, 185 f. The present writer followed Clay in writing his RISA, and, although the reading is adopted by Friedrich in his Staatsverträge des Hatti-Reiches in hethitischer Sprache, Leipzig, 1930 (see, e.g., pp. 112, 113), reexamination of the subjecLdiscloses no adequate basis for the reading either in Babylonian or Hittite. True, Thureau-Dangin adopts the reading, Le syllabaire accadien, Paris, 1926, p. 54, on the basis of a publication of Zimolong which is not accessible to me, but in his Les homophones sumeriens, Paris, 1929, he appears to have abandoned the reading, (cf. p. 3 f.). It seems safer, accordingly, to revert to the older reading Zamama.
2	Pantheon Babylonicum, no. 1310.
3	Cf. e.g., Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoi, V, Leipzig, 1921, no. 3, i, 52.
4	Cf. Friedrich, op. cit., pp. 112, 113.
5	See Speiser, Mesopotamian Origins, Philadelphia, 1930.
6	RISA, p. 3.
7	Ibid., p. 337.264
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
and also ‘lord of favorable omens.’1 Similarly Hammurabi, who rebuilt the temple Emeteursag and ziggurat of Zamama and Ishtar,2 speaks of Zamama in the prologue of his code of laws as The founder of Kish.’3 In the epilogue he says that Zamama and Ishtar entrusted him with weapons.4 Among the curses invoked upon anyone who should deface his code of laws, the same king wrote, “May Zamama, the great warrior, the firstborn son of Ekur, who marches at my right hand, shatter his weapons in the day of battle.”8 Zamama was, at this period, therefore regarded as a god of battle. Several centuries later the last king but one of the Kassite dynasty bore the name Zamama-shum-iddin.8 Centuries later still, Nebuchadrezzar II rebuilt the temple Emeteursag and renewed in it the worship of Zamama.7 He, too, couples the god with Ishtar and regards him as an invincible god of war.8 His name appears also in incantation texts of the late Assyrian period.9 The speculations of theologians as represented in the syllabaries identified him with other gods. One school which was devoted to Nin-urta equated him with that god along with thirty-three other gods,10 while another school which was devoted to Marduk explained him, as it did the other principal gods, as a phase of the god Marduk.11
In the chronicles of the kings of the Sargonide dynasty of Kish and Agade his name does not occur, but instead we have a god Ama12 (possibly to be read Aga). What the relation of Ama is to Zamama is not clear, though the functions of the two are similar. Sargon regarded him as a god of battle;13 Manishtusu claimed to derive
'Ibid., p. 381.
2	Cf. Meissner, Altbabylonische Privatrecht, Leipzig, 1893, no. 46, 35 £f.; cf. also Poebel, BE, VI, 2, p. 67.
3	Cf. col. 1, 55 f.
4	Col. xl, 23 f.
5	Col. xliii, 81 ff.
6	See L. W. King, History of Babylon, London, 1915, p. 244 f.
7	Cf. Langdon, Neubabylonischen Königsinschriften, Leipzig, 1912, pp. 104, 176.
8/Ä, pp. 184 and 187.
9	Cf. e.g., Zimmern, Beiträge zur Kentniss der Babylonischen Religion, Leipzig, 1901, pp. 22, 23.
10	Cf. CT, XXV, 12, 25.
11	Cf. CT, XXIV, 50, no. 47406.
12	Cf. RISA, pp. 110, 124, 126, 130, 136, 138.
"Ibid., pp. 111 and 125.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
265
from him his authority to govern,3 as did Naram-Sin.2 Like his predecessor Rimush,3 Manishtusu associates him with Shamash, the sun-god.4 In view of the fact that the names of both deities appear on the stele of Manishtusu5 it would seem doubtful if they are to be identified. It is possible, however, that Ama was originally an epithet of Zamama, which by the time of Manishtusu was beginning to be thought of as a separate deity.
Turning again to deities of a non-local character, we find it instructive to study another that was originally a chthonic swine-deity, Nin-shakh or Nin-shubur,6 whose Semitic name was Iliabrat.7 The second element in her name was clearly an ideograph which pictured the head of a hog or a variety of swine,8 and the name meant ‘lady of swine.’ The worship of this deity must be very old, but we cannot trace the cult in the literature until the reigns of Luga-landa and Urukagina. At this period at least one woman bore the name Nin-subur-ama-mu, ‘Ninshubur is my mother.’9 Urukagina appealed to her to offer prayers to Ningirsu for the prolongation of his life,10 showing that she was already regarded as an intercessor with other gods for men. Gudea built a temple for her and called her ‘the great messenger of Anu.’u By his time her chthonic character was being merged into a celestial one. Rim-Sin made much of the worship of this deity. By his time Ninshubur was a masculine deity. He called him king,12 lord,13 and exalted prince,14 and still regarded him as an intercessor for men with other gods,15 and as a
'Ibid., p. 131.
2	Ibid., p. 139.
3	Ibid., p. 127.
* Ibid., p. 137.
5	Cf. Délégation en Perse, II, Paris, 1900, Face A, viii, 20; ix, 5 and Face C, xiii, 25.
6	Cf. Thureau-Dangin, Lettres et contractes de Vepoque de la première dynastie babylonienne, p. 65 f.
7	Cf. OLZ, 1908, 184.
8	Cf. OBW, no. 52.
9	Cf. Nik. no 2, vii, 13; TSA, no. 15, viii, 11; and TSA, 17, vii, 12.
10	RISA, p. 75.
11	Ibid., p. 261.
12	Ibid pp. 327 and 329.
13	Ibid., p. 325.
14	Ibid.
15	Ibid., p. 385.266
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
god ‘who makes oracles just;’1 also a chief messenger or minister of the great gods.2 This character of Ninshubur was maintained in the later traditions. The syllabaries of the Assyrian period still call her the messenger of Anu and Antu.3 As a messenger this deity figures in liturgies and hymns.4
The deity of the Sumerian city of Kutha (biblical Cutha) became very prominent in the later religion. While the origin of this deity and his consort is fairly clear, it will be impossible to sketch the beginnings and the history of the cult until the site of Kutha has been excavated. The name of the deity which first appears in the list of deities invoked by rulers of Susa is usually written Né-unu-gai, ‘The lion of the great dwelling’—the ‘great dwelling’ being the earth. His consort was Eresh-ki-gal, ‘Lady of the great earth,’ and in later mythology they became deities of the underworld. A myth concerning them was found at El-Amarna in Egypt.5 It may be, as Deimel suggests, that Né-unu-gal was pronounced Ne-ri-gal, for the Hebrews knew the god of Kutha as Nergal, and in Greek the name of the fourth king of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty was spelled NvpLyWurapos,6 showing that it was at that time so pronounced in Babylon. He was also called Mes-lam-ta-e,7 ‘He who comes forth from Mes-lam,’ E-mes-lam being the name of his temple in Kutha.8 Mes-lam, means ‘prince of the plough’ or ‘of fruitage’9—an appropriate epithet of an earth-god. If, as we have supposed, Kutha was a Sumerian settlement,10 both Neunugal and Ereshkigal were developed from the same mother-goddess, which the Sumerians generally called Ninkhursag, and her child.
As noted already, Puzur-Shushinak of Susa included Nergal in his list of avenging deities,11 and Arisen, king of UrkishandNawar,
1	Ibid., p. 325.
2	Ibid.
3	CT, XXIV, 40, 51 ff.
4	Cf. e.g., Langdon, Babylonian Liturgies, Paris, 1913, no. 56. rev. 30.
5	Cf. Jensen’s translation in KB, VI, pp. 74-79.
6	Cf. the Canon of Ptolemy.
7	RISA, p. 277.
*Ibid.
9	Cf. OBW, no. 388.
10	See above, Ch. Ill, p. 67.
11	RISA, p. 157.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
267
built a temple to him1 (probably Emeslam), as did king Shulgi of Ur.2 Warad-Sin and Rim-Sin both regarded him as a terrible warrior to enemies, but one who protected his own devotees.3 The worship of Nergal spread widely over Babylonia and he took many forms. He was worshipped in Nippur, Erech, Babylon, and other places.4 He was, as already noted, god of vegetation, war, and the underworld. As a god of vegetation and life, he became also god of flocks and herds;8 as god of the underworld, he became lord of demons6 and, because sickness was believed to be caused by demons, of pestilence and sickness.7 Nergal was identified with the star zal-bat-a-nu,8 which Jensen once identified with Mercury,9 Kiigler later identified him with Saturn,10 but he finally decided on Mars.11 Nergal and Sin were also identified with the star mas-tab-ba-ba-gal-gal-la,12 which is the great twins Castor and Pollux.13 His festival was celebrated from the 14th to the 28th of the month Kis-limu14 (i.e., at the time of the winter solstice), hence it has sometimes been inferred that Nergal was identified with the winter sun.15 It was formerly thought that he was also a personification of the summer sun and the noonday sun,16 but that seems to lack confirmation.17 His worship was popular both in Assyria and Babylonia as long as the civilization endured. He was a member of the pantheon of Ashurbanipal,18 and was a god of oracles to Nebuchadrezzar II.19
'Ibid., p. 171.
2	Ibid., pp. 277 and 279.
3	Ibid., pp. 325, 327, and 387.
4	Cf. Jastrow, Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, II, Berlin, 1912, p. 1086, and Barton, RISA, p. 335.
5	Cf. Jastrow, op. cit., I, 317.
6	Ibid., pp. 361, 467, 469, 472, and 480.
7	I.e., he was equated with the god Gir-ra; cf. Knudtzon, El-Amarna, no. 35, 8.
8	Cf. L. W. King, Babylonian Magic, no. 46, 9, and Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strassburg, 1890, 481.
9	Ibid., p. 119.
10	Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, I, Munster, 1907, 220 f.
11	Ibid., pp. 280 and 282.
12	V R 46, 5 and CT, XXXIII, 1, 5.
13	Kugler, op. cit., pp. 239 and 274.
14IV R, 32, 13b and 33, 33b.
15	Deimel, Pantheon Babylonicum, no. 2332.
16	Jastrow, op. cit., I, 65 f., and passim.
17	Cf. Deimel, loc. cit.
18	Cf. V R, 1, 17 and passim in the Rassam Cylinder.
19	Cf. the references in Langdon, Neubabylonischen Konigsinschriften, p. 305.268
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
There are three deities who were worshipped at Lagash and in southern Babylonia, and each of whom played some part in the mythology of later times, that were, in the judgment of the present writer, vegetation or agricultural deities. These were Ninshar, Ninsun, and Nin-IB (now usually read Nin-urta).
Ninshar means ‘Lady of the garden.’ She is a very ancient deity, being found already in the texts from Fara.1 If the name is significant of her origin, she was, at the first, the guardian spirit of the palm orchard. In the royal inscriptions from Lagash she is known as ‘the bearer of the dagger of Ningirsii’2—an epithet which implies a warlike character. As an important function in the raising of dates was to protect the growing crop from the depredations of robbers, the transition in thought from her agricultural functions to her warlike duties was easy. Although the name of this goddess does not occur often in the historical literature3 and in but few proper names,4 her memory survived in later mythology. In this she was not classed with the family of Ningirsu, as one would expect, but at times with that of Anu and Antum5 and at times with the family of Ea.6 She is once identified with a star.7 In a late hymn, in which she is regarded as a deity of Nippur, her warlike function survives and she is called ‘bearer of the dagger of Ekur.’8 It would appear, therefore, that, as a guardian deity of palm orchards she must have been more widely worshipped than the extant references in our literature would at first lead us to suppose.
Ninsun was apparently, as her name implies, originally the spirit of the irrigating machine9—an instrument of the greatest importance to the dwellers of Babylonia. On proper irrigation during the
1	Deimel, Schultexte aus Fara, no. 126744.
2	RISA, pp. 75, 77, 86.
3	Beside the three ocurrences in inscriptions of Urukagina just cited, there is known to me but one other mention by the kings before Hammurabi—that is by Shulgi, who rebuilt her temple; see RISA p. 367.
4	Cf. Nikolsky, Documents, no. 13, 3; Allotte de la Fuye, DP, 91, 1, and Legrain, Rois d’Ur, p. 159. She appears similarly in two or three names in the Kassite period; cf. Clay, BE, XIV, Index.
5	Cf. CT, XXIV, 10. 16-20.
*Ibid., 29, 102-104 and 30.13.
7	CT, XXXIII, 1. 23 ff.
8	Reisner, Hymnen, p. 137. 43 f.
9	See OBW, no. 381.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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intervals between the overflow of the rivers the life of the population depended. No wonder that she is called by Gudea ‘the righteous mother of all seed.’1 Singashid of Erech called himself her son.2 At Lagash her temple stood in Uruazagga.3 Between the time of Gudea and the time of Shulgi she, like a number of Babylonian deities, had undergone a transformation from a goddess to a god, for Shulgi called this deity ‘the great divine king, my king.’4 Libit-Ishtar of Isin regarded himself as her faithful high priest.5 Although at present we can trace the worship of this goddess in but three cities, her cult must have been old and important, for she is said in the Gilgamesh epic to have been the mother of Gilgamesh.6 As an element in personal names this goddess appears in the period of the kings of Ur both at Lagash and at Drehem.7 It appears from the paucity of references to her in the later mythology that she did not kindle the imagination of the later generations of Babylonians as did Ninshar. But one such reference is known to me, and that is in a late hymn.8
The case of Nin-IB (Nin-urta or Nin-urash) is not so simple. He figures largely in the later mythology, being regarded at times as a son of Enlil, at times as a son of Ea, and at others as a son of Ashur. Scholars have equated him with Ningirsu, Ningishzida, Ninshakh (Ninshubur), Dunpae, Lugalbanda, Zamama, Marduk, and Ashur. He is the consort of Bau and Gula. He has been identified with the sun, with Saturn, and with Venus. The deity first emerges in the texts and literature known to me in the period of the third dynasty of Ur. Two or three people of doubtful provenance are called Ur-dNin-urta, Su-dNin-urta,9 etc. In the lists of offerings from Drehem this deity appears as a goddess and as a consortofNusku.10 In
1	RISA, p. 255.
2	Ibid., p. 333.
3	7bid., p. 259.
4	RISA, p. 367.
5	Ibid., pp. 307 and 373.
6	KB, VI, 144.15, and 438.
7	Cf. Huber, Die Personennomen in den Keilschrifturkunden aus der Zeit der Konige von Ur und Nisin 178, BE, III, 58. 12; de Genouillac, Tablettes de Drehem, 5482 and 5501, and Langdon, Tablets from Drehem, 49.
8Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, 154. 1.
9	Gf. Huber, op. cit., p. 178.
10	Cf. Legrain, Le temps des rois d'Ur, nos. 255, 256, 259, 293, 295 and 296; also270
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historical inscriptions of the period before Hammurabi this deity is mentioned only by kings of the dynasty of Isin, Ishmi-Dagan* 1 and Damiq-ilishu.2 She was the guardian spirit*of the first, and the second claimed to be her favorite.
The opinion that I expressed some years ago3 that IB originally represented a granary and that Nin-IB was originally the spirit of the granary, still seems to be the most probable origin of this deity. As early as the Fara tablets there was at Surippak a god IB.4 In the time of Hammurabi this deity was god of Dilbat, and Hammurabi filled her granaries.5 IB thus seems to have been the tutelary deity of Dilbat, while it seems probable from the way in which Damiq-ilishu equates Nin-urta with Nin-insiana, the tutelary goddess of Isin, that Nin-urta was the original goddess of that city, and that Nin-insiana was at Isin a local epithet of her.6 If such was her origin she was at first called by the name of the granary itself (a custom which survived at Dilbat) and then, ‘The lady of the granary’—a nomenclature followed in most places. The two survived in later mythology side by side. It only remains to add that, like so many other Sumerian deities, the goddess was in time transformed into a god. It seems unnecessary to recapitulate here the varied phases through which Nin-urta passed. The materials have been collected by Jastrow7 and Deimel8 and the arguments in favor of the views expressed here were presented by me several years ago in an article entitled “The Problem of the Origin and Early History of the Deity Nin-ib (Nin-urta, Nin-urash).”9
The deity associated with Nin-urta as her consort in the tablets from Drehem is the fire-god Nusku. His name is usually written
Langdon, Tablets from the Archives of Drehem, no. 17, and de Genouillac, Tablettes de Drehem, nos. 5501 and 5513.
1	RISA, p. 305.
2	Ibid., p. 391.
3	JAOS, XLVI, 231-236.
4	Deimel, Wirtschaftstexte aus Fara, no. 6, rs. IV, 8.
5	See his Laws, III, 16-24.
6	Cf. RISA, p. 391. For other occurrences of the name of Nin-insiana, see RISA, pp. 309, 313, 321, 323, 385, 387 and 389.
7	See the numerous references in Jastrow, Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens} II, p. 1088 ff.
8	See Deimel, Pantheon Babylonicum, no. 1495 for lb, and no. 2583 for Nin-ib.
9	JAOS XLVI, 231-236.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
271
by the ideogram pa-ku, which could mean ‘The shining weapon’;1 sometimes it is written ses-kak, ‘brother of the stick.’2 The god is evidently the spirit of fire. It is possible first to trace his worship in the time of the third dynasty of Ur, when he seems to have been popular at Drehem, where he was worshipped with his consort, Nin-urta. This pair were honored along with Enlil and Ninlil, Utu (Shamash) and Ishtar.3 In later centuries this god was widely honored. He was celebrated in hymnology,4 and, as was to be expected, often invoked in the incantations to destroy the enemies of one who considered himself bewitched.5 He became a member of the Assyrian pantheon.
A discussion of the origins of Babylonian deities should not conclude without a word concerning the popular deities of Babylon and Borsippa. At Babylon the tutelary god of the city and the head of the pantheon was Marduk. This god was made by the hegemony which Hammurabi gained for Babylon the first deity of the land, a position which he maintained through the subsequent years of Babylonian history. Jastrow pointed out years ago how, in order to glorify him, the attributes and functions of other gods were attribted to him.6 Thus, in order to justify his position as head of the pantheon, practically all the functions of Enlil were attributed to him and Enlil’s epithet, ‘Bel, became his regular title. In a noteworthy text thirteen other gods are said to be but phases of Marduk.7 Thus Lugal-a-ki-a-ta is said to be the Marduk of the deep; Ninurta, the Marduk of might; Nergal, the Marduk of fight; Zamama, the Marduk of battle; Enlil, the Marduk of lordship; Nabu, the Marduk of cult-ceremonial; Sin, the Marduk of nocturnal illumination; Shasmah, the Marduk of fidelity; Adad, the Marduk of rain; Ishtar, the Marduk of artisans; Malik, the Marduk of strength; and Shukamunu, the Marduk of the storage-jar.” In the seventh
1	Cf. OBW no. 249.42 and no. 481.24.
2	Briinnow, Classified List of Cuneiform Ideographs, no. 6450; cf. OBW no. 290. 1 and no. 227.25.
3	See Langdon, Tablets from the Archives of Drehem, no. 17, and de Genouillac, Tablettes de Drehem, nos. 5501 and 5513.
4IV2 R 26, no. 2 and James A. Craig, Assyrian and Babylonian Religious Texts, I, Leipzig, 1895, 35 and 36.
5	See the Maqlu and Surpu texts, passim.
6	Jastrow, Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians, Boston, 1898.
7	CT, XXIV, 50.272
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
tablet of the creation epic this tendency reaches its culmination. Fifty names are there assigned to Marduk, many of which are the names of other deities.1 Among them is the name Asharu, the god of the wooden post, one of the most primitive of Semitic deities, who, in the time of Gudea, was in Lagash a god of vegetation and was apparently equated with Ningirsu.2 All these aspects of the cult of Marduk have been amply commented upon by others and are fairly well known.3 What particularly interests us in this study is Mar-duk’s origin. In this quest we have almost nothing to guide us, since there are but one or two occurrences of the name before the time of Hammurabi, and those are of somewhat doubtful character.4 We know nothing of the god beyond the fact that he was the tutelary deity of Babylon and the little that his name may reveal to us. His name is written with the sign ud or utu,5 the ideogram, for the sun-god and the sign amar, an ideogram for ‘child/ ‘young animal/6 Phonetic spellings of it are Ma-ru-duk, Mar-duk, and Mar-du-ku.7 It is clear from these spellings that the syllable ‘mar’ is an abbreviation of ‘amar’ and that ‘duk’ is the pronunciation of the sun-sign utu. Among the Sumerian syllabic values of the sign utu is the value ‘dag/8 but not ‘duk. ‘Duk? is a unique reading of the sign, and its ending, k, is characteristic of certain of the names which we have previously traced to the Central Asiatic element in Babylonian civilization, such, for example, as Surippak, and Shushinak. We are accordingly led to postulate the theory that, if we could know the whole history of Marduk, we should find that he was a deity of this race. The beginnings of the settlement on the site of Babylon are not known, but it is quite possible that they had a great antiquity and were made by these Central Asiatic settlers. In the texts from Fara, the ancient Surippak, there are six different child- or calf-deities whose names begin with ‘amar/9 One of these is Amar-dag-
1	See L. W. King, The Seven Tablets of Creation, London, 1902.
2	RISA, p. 239 f.
3	For example in Jastrow, Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, and Deimel, Pantheon Babylonicum.
4	Cf. Deimel, op. cit., no. 2078.
5	Cf. OBW, no. 337.
5 Ibid., no. 392.
7	See Deimel, loc. cit.
8	Cf. OBW 337. 6, 8.
9	Cf. Deimel, Schultexte aus Fara, p. 10*.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
273
bil—a name that might mean ‘The widely extending-fire-child.’1 This affords some basis, however slender, for supposing that, however much of the character of Marduk in the historic period may have been contributed by later developments, metamorphoses, and absorptions, his name may have been contributed by that ancient race which first established itself in the Babylonian alluvium.
The consort of Marduk was Zarpanitum, whose name is good Akkadian and means ‘Creator of seed.’ She is usually pictured as a nude goddess with full breasts, which she is often clasping.2 In the thought of the people of the Babylonian period she performed the functions ascribed at Lagash to Ninkhursag in the time of Eannatum. Clearly she absorbed in herself all the functions of fertility that the Sumerians had ascribed to Ninkhursag, the Central Asiatics to Nina, and the Akkadians to Ishtar. In a mythological syllabary she is equated with twelve other goddesses, one of which is Elagu of Elam.3
The chief deity of Borsippa was Nabu, whose name is most often, when written ideographically, expressed either by the sign AG, ‘build/ ‘create’4 or the sign PA, ‘scribe.’5 Thirty years ago the writer was led to conjecture6 that Nabu was a later form of Dumuzi-absu, Dumuzi of the abyss, and the recent investigations of Unger tend to confirm that view.
In the time of Hammurabi the deity of Borsippa was called Tutu7—a name which means ‘The Excavator.’8 Nabu is later called ‘Nabu sa hare,7 or ‘Nabu of the excavations’9 or canals. He was thus connected with the waters of the abyss as Dumuzi had been in earlier days. This made him a god of wisdom, kindred to Ea, and thus he became the god of speech, Nabu, and the god of learning. As the god of learning the stylus of the scribe was an appropriate symbol of his name; as a god of fertility he was equally well denoted
1	Cf. OBW nos. 244.6 and 185.30.
2	Cf. W. H. Ward, Seal Cylinders of Western Asia, p. 162.
3	CT. XXV, 35.8-19.
4	OBW no. 112.
8 Ibid., no. 249.
6 A Sketch of Semitic Origins, p. 21 Off.
1 Laws, iii, 10.
8	OBW. no. 57.6.
9	See V R 34.2, 7.274
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by the sign for ‘create/ ‘make/ His name Nabu is found as early as the time of the first dynasty of Babylon.1
His consort was Tashmit, ‘hearing/ ‘revelation’—a name clearly given her as the counterpart of the talking-god. In character she was a goddess of fertility, and was doubtless in reality but another name of one of the older goddesses of fertility.2
Ancient Assyria took its name from the city Ashur, and Ashur was also the name of the city’s god.3 The Assyrian empire, like the Roman empire, arose from the extension of the dominion of a city, and in the historic period at the head of the city was the city’s god Ashur. Its earliest rulers known to us consider themselves his viceroys, while the latest regard themselves as his sons or servants; they wage war at his bidding and conquer nations by his might. For the most part Assyrians worshipped the same gods as the Babylonians, but their national god Ashur belonged to them alone. It has been shown above in Chapter III that the Assyrian people were composed of two strains, a Central Asiatic element and a Semitic element. While the Semitic element gave to the land its Semitic speech, the Central Asiatic element contributed its facial expression —an expression differing strikingly from that of the Babylonians.
The excavations of Andrae at the city of Ashur have revealed the fact that, contemporary with the first period of civilization at La-gash, there was a Sumerian settlement at Ashur.4 In studying the origin of the god Ashur, it is necessary to bear all these facts in mind. The name of Ashur has usually been taken as the point of departure for a study of his origin, but the name is variously spelled. Sometimes it appears as A-sur;5 at others as As-sur;6 at others, as A-sir.7
1	For fuller details see Unger’s article “Borsippa” 59 in Ebeling und Meissner’s
Reallexicon der Assyriologie.
2	So Unger, loc. cit.
3	For a recent discussion of the city and its deity, see Ebeling und Meissner’s Reallexicon.
4	Andrae, Die archdischen Ischtar-Tempel in Ashur, Tafel 39; cf. Sidney Smith, Early History of Assyria to 1000 B.C., ch. VI.
That the Sumerians occuppied other points in Assyria during this period is shown by Starr’s discovery of Sumerian documents at Nuzi in a stratum dating from about 2500 B.C. Cf. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 48, p. 2, and Annual, XIII, 1-12.
5L. W. King, Annals of the Kings of Assyria, London, 27.1, 33, 35, etc.
9 Ibid., pp. 6.24; 25.11, etc.
7 Ibid., p. XIV, photo.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
275
In an Assyrian version of the creation epic it is spelled An-sar;1 while in Sumerian texts it is A-usar.2 Haupt formerly derived the name from Ishtar,3 taking Assur as the correct spelling, while the present writer took it as a derivative of the rootASR,4 by which the primitive Semitic tree-divinity was designated. He is not yet convinced that there is not an element of truth in this view, but it evidently is not the whole truth. It does not reveal the complete history of the deity.
In the cult of a place such as the city Ashur—a place which had a long history to which different races contributed—contributions to the cult are made by each race which inhabits the spot. We may be sure that this happened at Ashur. The Central Asiatics, the Sumerians, and the Semites each contributed something. The key to the contributions of the Sumerians and Central Asiatics is found in the Sumerian form of the god’s name, A-usar. This name means Water-net.’ It points to the fact that the first settlement at Ashur was a fishing settlement and that the fishing was done by some sort of net or trap for the fishes. In our study of Babylonia we found that at least one place-name there5—a name given by the Central Asiatic people—had just this meaning; we also found that the Sumerians had, in a number of instances, translated these early names into their own language. It does not, therefore, seem too much to assume that Ashur was originally a Central Asiatic fishing station, and that its god was the deity of the town. When, soon after 3000 B.C., the Sumerians came, they translated the name of the town and of the god into their own language, making it A-usar. Later, when Semites gained control, the similarity of this name to the name of their own goddess Ashera led them to preserve it with slight transformation and to perpetuate it. They naturally identified the god with their old tree-deity of fertility and made Ashur the giver of life and plenty. The composite inhabitants of the city Ashur long made war and robbery one of their principal means of subsistence.
1	Dhorme, Textes Religieux, 90.30; 92.23.
2	Cf. IV R, 18.2; 32 ff.
3	Cf. ZDMG XXXIV, 178. He later changed his opinion and derived Ishtar from Ashur, in JAOS XXVIII, 112.
4	Semitic Origins, p. 223.
5	See above, Ch. Ill, p. 76.276
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It thus happened that Ashur naturally became to them a god of war— believed to be the best divine fighter in western Asia.
One other Assyrian deity deserves a word of discussion—Ishtar of Nineveh, for she, too, came into being as the result of the fusion of two ethnic cults. It has already been pointed out1 that the city of Nineveh, like the quarter of Lagash called Nina, was founded by that Central Asiatic race whose word for fish was nun, and whose fish-goddess was Nina. The name of Nineveh perpetuated to the end of Assyrian history the fact that the city was originally the temple of this goddess. Later, when the dominant element of the population of Nineveh had become Semites, it was natural for them to fuse this goddess with their own and to call her name Ishtar.
The consciousness, however, that the Ishtar of Nineveh possessed characteristics different from those of other Ishtars persisted to the end of Assyrian history. Ashurbanipal, the last great king of Assyria, worshipped a pantheon of twelve deities, but in enumerating them the Ishtar of Nineveh is always distinguished from the Ishtar of Arbela.2 The Ishtar of Nineveh was a goddess of fertility; the Ishtar of Arbela was a goddess of war. Arbela was the Urbillum of the kings of the third dynasty of Ur, and the Lulubu of an earlier time. There appears to have been a Semitic settlement there as early as the first half of the third millennium B.C. It is altogether probable that when the Semites settled there they displaced or mingled with earlier occupants of a different racial descent, but whether they found there a persistent cult, like that of Nina at Nineveh may, perhaps, be doubted. Whether the cult of Ishtar of Arbela were wholly of Semitic origin or not, it is clear that there were elements that kept her cult distinct from the cult of Ishtar of Nineveh as long as the Assyrian empire continued.
It seems unnecessary to pursue the discussion of Babylonian and Assyrian origins further. It is manifestly impossible in a work like this to discuss all of the 3,296 deities listed by Deimel in his Pantheon Babylonicum. As many of these are epithets, to do so would be as profitless from the point of view of origins as it would be tedious. Enough has been said to show how the recognition of the presence of three ethnic strands in the racial composition of the in-
1	See above, p. 63.
2	Cf. the Rassam Cylinder, passim.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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habitants of the country illumines the problems connected with the emergence and evolution of its principal deities.
In this study one striking fact must have impressed the reader. In the Sumerian period of Babylonian history the number of deities who changed their sex is remarkably large. Beginning as goddesses they became gods. On the way some of them vacillated for a time between the sexes, as though the worshippers were divided in opinion as to whether the deity were male or female. The number of times, however, that the scale turned in the end to the masculine side is large. Thirty years ago the writer thought that this was due to a law of social evolution; at present he has no theory by which to account for it other that that males were the ruling sex in Babylonia and that worshippers accordingly thought it more honorable to a deity to address it as a male.
Every city of Babylonia had its temples, and these temples had a long history. They were not only built and rebuilt; they acquired lands and became at times comparable to the great European baronies of the Middle Ages; they were equipped with extensive priesthoods; they became the centers of schools of learning; extensive daily sacrifices were provided;1 liturgies were developed, and hymns of various types composed to be chanted in the service. The study of all these lies beyond the scope of our present investigation. A few words must, however, be said concerning the religious festivals of the country, for, although comparatively little is known of the details of their celebration, that little is of importance because it affords important information concerning certain questions of origin. Our sources afford definite information as to the way the New Year festival was celebrated at Lagash in the time of Gudea, ca. 2400 B.C., and also how it was observed in Babylon in the time of Nebuchadrezzar II, about 600 B.C.
Gudea had rebuilt the temple of Eninnu, and at the festival of the New Year brought the deities Ningirsu and Bau into the sanctuary. He says:2 “The year went round; the months were completed; the new year came in the heavens; the month of that temple began. The third day of that month was bright; Ningirsu came from Eridu, with bright radiant light he shone; over the land day rose;at Eninnu
1	Cf. RISA, p. 131 ff.
2	See Cyl. B, iii. 4 ff. in RISA, p. 239 ff.278
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the moon-god was born.”1 The passage goes on to describe the offerings which Gudea brought. Porphyry and lapis lazuli were presented as a gift of honor; he sprinkled the ground with oil; he brought from the temple a sacred serpent who was believed to produce an abundant harvest. As food for the gods he provided honey, butter, wine, milk, grain, olive oil, figs, dates, and grapes. On that day they began to harvest the fields. The god was carried into the temple; he was now called Asharu, the name of the old Semitic tree-god. The god entered as a holy song was sung and incense was burned. The whole city was made to kneel; by day and night prayers were offered. At dawn Ningirsu and Bau were inducted into the temple. Gudea as chief priest offered in sacrifice a fat bullock and a fat ram; from a leaden bowl he poured a libation of wine, and a prolonged feast was held. The images of twenty-one other deities, the servants, children, and attendants of Ningirsu and Bau, were then brought into the temple Each of these, under the direction of Ningirsu, was believed to perform some useful function. At the end of a day of feasting Ningirsu and Bau went into an inner sanctuary, their bedchamber, and engaged in marital union which is frankly described. Upon this “the holy bowl of the terrace of the great dwelling was submerged; the great water-courses that were low became like water that bowls will not hold; it stood in their plantations ; from the Tigris and Euphrates it joyously overflowed.” Such was the ritual of the first day. Gudea then provided abundant food, and a festival was kept for seven days. During this period the ordinary distinctions of society were blotted out and equality prevailed. “The maid and her mistress were equal; the master and his slave walked side by side; on the evil tongue the word was changed (to good); . . . the rich man did not wrong the orphan; no man oppressed the widow; . . . the sun-god brought about that which was just; on all that was evil the sun-god stamped his foot.”
Water was clearly regarded as the spermatazoa of the gods. The goddess Bau represented mother earth; in the marital union the fertilizing waters were poured out, and the earth fertilized so that
1 An intercalary month had to be inserted occasionally to keep the calendar correct. This passage shows the month began in that year two days too early, but it was not yet enough to justify an intercalary month.BABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
279
vegetation could grow. Two ancient Babylonian myths show,1 in addition to this passage from Gudea, that this was the Babylonian conception of the origin and yearly renewal of vegetable life. This fact throws light on the existence and functions of the sacred women mentioned in the inscriptions from the time of Ur-Nina2 onward, four classes of whom are recognized in the code of Hammurabi. The raison d’etre of the existence of such women was that intercourse with them might by a sort of sympathetic magic encourage the mother-goddess to be in like manner receptive and so make the earth fertile. Doubtless in time these ideas had a reflex influence and produced the custom which Herodotus,3 writing 2000 years after Gudea, reports, in accordance with which a woman, in order to insure her fertility, must once in her life offer herself for prostitution in the temple of the mother-goddess.
No such detailed information concerning the celebration of the festival of the New Year as that given by Gudea for Lagash has come down to us except for Babylon, and unfortunately that for Babylon is not complete. A liturgy for four days of the Babylonian celebration has been discovered, disclosing how the feast was kept in Babylon in the time of Nebuchadrezzar II.4 Probably the same ritual was followed as long as the Babylonian cult survived. At Babylon the festival began on the first of Nisan and lasted through the eleventh of that month. Unfortunately the ritual for the first of Nisan has not been preserved. On Nisan second, two hours before sunrise the high priest arose, bathed, put on linen garments, and went alone into the sanctuary of Marduk, where he recited a hymn glorifying Marduk as the one who brought deliverance to the gods, who casts down the mighty by his glance; as lord of kings, light of men; as lord whose throne is Babylon, whose crown is Bor-sippa, etc., etc. He then opened the doors, and all the priests of different classes and ranks, together with the singers, enter and go
1	See Barton, Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, no. 4, p. 34 if., where the deities are Enlil and Ninlil; also Archaeology and the Bible 6th ed., pp. 345-346, where the deities are Enki and Nintu(d), who in that text is identified with Ninkhursag.
2	Cf. RISA, p. 17.
3	Bk. I, 199.
4	Cf. F. Thureau-Dangin, Rituels accadiens, pp. 127-146; and Langdon, The Babylonian Epic of Creation, Oxford, 1923; and Zimmern, Das babylonische Neumjahrsfest, Der Alte Orient, Band 25, Heft 3, Leipzig, 1926.280
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through the regular ritual in worship of Marduk. This concluded with a thrice-repeated prayer to Marduk to protect Babylon and his holy sanctuary from enemies of all sorts and adversaries of all sorts. The remaining directions for this day are lost.
On Nisan third, as on the second, the high priest rises and repeats in the sancutary alone a hymn, as he had done on the previous day; then again he admits the remaining priests who perform a ritual provided for the day. Its details are unfortunately lost. Three hours after sunrise a wood-carver, a goldsmith, a stone-cutter, and a weaver are admitted, who make two statues, one from cedar and one from tamarisk-wood, deck them with gold and precious stones, and clothe them and present them as an expiatory offering. The size of these statues was the width of seven fingers. One figure held in his left hand a serpent of cedar and raised his right hand to Nabu; the other held in his left hand a scorpion, while he similarly raised his right to Nabu. Both were clothed in red and about their hips palm branches were bound.
On the morning of the fourth of Nisan the high priest again arose and bathed three and a third hours before sunrise, and entering the chapel of Marduk and Zarpanit, he recited a prayer to each. The prayer to Marduk recalled a number of Marduk’s exploits described in the creation epic. That to Zarpanit pays homage to her as the kind Madonna who makes the poor rich, who casts to the ground the enemy who does not fear her divinity, who delivers the captive, who takes the hand of the fallen, etc. The high priest then comes out into the great court of the temple and, facing the north, recites three times a prayer for the temple Esagila. The prayer was entitled “Constellation of the Ram, Esagila, Pattern of Heaven and Earth.” The prayer was recited while the stars were still shining. He then blessed the temple and opened the doors. All the priests then came in and performed the morning rites. After the evening meal on the fourth day the high priest again entered the sanctuary of Marduk and recited the whole of the epic of creation, of which Marduk was the hero. During this recital the crown of Anu and the throne of Enlil were covered—apparently in symbolism of the fact that by his heroic fight with Tiamat Marduk had superseded these older gods.
On the morning of the fifth day the high priest arose four hoursBABYLONIAN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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before sunrise, bathed, and entering the chapel of Marduk and Zarpanit recited to each a special hymn for the day. After this the other priests were admitted, as on previous days, to perform the regular offices of the day. Two hours after sunrise, after the morning offerings to Marduk and Zarpanit had been completed, an incantation priest was summoned to purify the temple. This priest was not permitted to enter the sanctuary of Marduk and Zarpanit, nor could the high priest perform the ceremony of purification. This was done with Tigris and Euphrates water. The doors were touched with cedar oil, while torches burned, kettledrums played, and incense rose. The incantation priest then purified the sanctuary of Nabu, who had not yet arrived. As a part of the ritual of this purification a ram was slain by a sword-bearer and his head and body were cast into the river, while the priests and sword-bearer faced the west. Both these officials then were obliged to go into the country and not return as long as Nabu remained in the temple for the festival. At three and a third hours after sunrise the high priest summoned artisans who decorated the chapel of Nabu with a golden canopy brought from the treasury of Marduk, and the high priest and the artisans together sang an incantation hymn, in which they called upon Marduk and all the gods to purify the temple and ward off every evil. The artisans then left the chapel. Later the high priest made an offering to Marduk of roast meat, bread, salt, honey, and wine, and recited a prayer in which he informed the god that he was making preparation for the procession of Marduk to the festal house outside the city. The sacrificial table was then carried from the chapel of Marduk to that of Nabu, to await the coming of that god on the following day from Borsippa to take part in the festal progress of Marduk.
The king next arrived on the scene and was conducted by the priests to Esagila. The attendant priests then withdrew so that the king stood alone before the chapel of Marduk. The high priest then took from the king his scepter, his ring, his toothed sickle, and his royal crown, and carried them into the presence of Marduk and placed them on a seat. The priest then returned, smote the king on the cheek, pulled his ears and made him kneel before Marduk and recite a prayer in which he protests that he has not sinned against the god, has not destroyed Babylon or Esagila, nor in any282
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way dishonored Marduk. The high priest then addressed the king, assuring him of the god’s favor and promising him an increase of power. He then returned to him the insignia of his royalty—the scepter, ring, toothed sickle, and crown. The king then left the chapel.
Forty minutes after sunset the high priest bound a bundle of forty reeds, each three cubits long, with a palm branch, and placing the reeds in a trench dug in the temple court, placed a white bull before the trench and set the reeds on fire. While they burned the king and high priest together recited a prayer beginning, “0 divine bull, brilliant light, that illumines the darkness.” At this point the text is broken away, and what was done on the next six days of the festival, beyond the bringing of Nabu from Borsippa and the procession of Marduk, we do not know.
On comparing the ritual of this Babylonian feast, which comes from a date some 1800 years later than that recorded by Gudea, one is impressed with its greater elaboration. The difference is somewhat analogous to that between the J and P documents in the Old Testament. In the ritual of Babylon, as in that of P, there are elements that are very old, like the killing of the sheep and its attendant ritual. There are other ancient elements—ancient but not so old—such as burning the reeds in the presence of the white bull. Other elements are clearly later elaborations.
Had we the whole ritual we should doubtless find that on one of the later days of the feast the marriage of Marduk and Zarpanit was celebrated as was the marriage of Ningirsu and Bau in the ritual of Lagash. Perhaps it was on this day and as a part of its service that the sacrifice of chastity to Zarpanit described by Herodotus1 took place.
We hear of similar festivals at the beginning of the New Year at Erech and Ashur and, had we fuller information, we should find them celebrated in every Babylonian and Assyrian city.
1 Bk. I, 199.IX
WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
IN a previous chapter a sketch has been given of the rise of the various Semitic nations. It was shown that the West Semitic world was peopled by the coming of successive waves of Semites— Amorites, Canaanites and Aramaeans1 who reached the lands which border the eastern Mediterranean in the order named. In a historical study we should accordingly study first the religion of the Amorites.
From the El-Amarna tablets,2 we learn that between 1400 and 1350 B.C. there existed an Amorite kingdom which occupied the ground later inhabited by the tribe of Asher and the southern part of the valley between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains. One of their chieftains bore the name Arad-Ashirta or Ebed-Ashera, a fact which shows that they worshipped one of the primitive Semitic mother-goddesses. If we assume, as I think we may, that the inscriptions of Serabit el-Khadem were written by Amorites, we know that they worshipped a goddess whom they called Baalat,3 and who was equated with the Egyptian Hathor. Baalat, meaning 'The lady/ is clearly an epithet. If she could be equated with the Egyptian Hathor, she was a goddess of fertility. Knowing what we do of the goddesses of fertility of the other Semitic peoples, it is safe to assume that she was an Ashtart or an Ashera. Possibly we may assume on the basis of the El-Amarna letters that she was Ashera.
Another deity that can be traced to the Amorites is the god 'Amm, That 'Amm was a deity of the Qatabanians in South Arabia has already been pointed out. When the Amorites invaded Babylonia they carried this deity with them and introduced him there. Though we have no record of a cult of 'Amm in this country, his name ap-
1	See Chapter III, pp. 74 and 80f.
2	See Knudtzon, El-Amarna Tafeln, no. 103 if.
3	See, e.g., Sayce and Cowley, Inscriptions from Sinai, London, 1917, nos. 352 and 353. Cf. also R. F. Butin in the Harvard Theological Review, XXI, 39-67.
283284
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pears as a divine element in the name of Hammurabi, Ammizadugga, and Ammiditani, and in various Babylonian names of later time. Contemporary with the inscriptions of Serabit el-Khadem we find the name of an Amorite recorded in the Egyptian tale of Sinuhe, in which the god 'Amm appears as a formative element. It is the name Ammianshi. Jaussen and Savignac have brought to light from the oasis of El-01a, 328 kilometers north of Medina, a number of inscriptions in the South Arabian alphabet which reveal that there once existed there a colony of South Arabians who worshipped the god 'Amm.1 It was, perhaps, from such a settlement as this in some North Arabian oasis that Ammi-anshi reached the region of Sinai where Sinuhe came in contact with him. At all events the settlement at El-01a forms a geographical link between the 'Amm worshippers of South Arabia and those of Palestine.
In Palestine itself the Ammonites, who lived along the desert edge of the Transjordania until after the time of David and gave their name to the city of 'Amman, were worshippers of this god, and consequently a branch of the Amorites. Their tribal name is an adjective formed from the name of the god, and we know of at least one Ammonite, 'Ammiel,2 who bore a name compounded with that of this deity. From the evidence of the Babylonian sources we are justified in connecting the worship of 'Amm in North Semitic lands with the Amorites.3 The Ammonites were, then, a small division of this far-flung people. In due time Aramaeans and Hebrews penetrated Palestine, mingled with the Amorites and absorbed them, but evidence of their influence is perpetuated in the survival in the Old Testament of a number of names compounded with 'Amm. Such are Ammiel, a Danite;4 Eliam, the father of Bathsheba;5 Ammihud, a Geshurite;6 Ammi-nadab, Aaron’s father-in-law,7 and a number of others. The late G. B. Gray collected a dozen such names.8 He doubted, however, whether in most cases the 'Amm in
1	Jaussen et Savignac, Mission archéologique en Arabie, p. 236.
2	2 Sam. 17:27.
3	See L. B. Paton, History of Palestine and Syria, p. 28, and A. T. Clay, Empire of the Amoritesy New Haven, 1919, p. 36.
4	Nu. 13:12.
5	2 Sam. 11:3.
6	2 Sam. 13:37.
7	Ex. 6:23; Nu. 1:7, etc.
8	Studies in Hebrew Proper Names, London, 1896, p. 54.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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them represented a deity. Since *Amm can mean also ‘kinsman/ and since we have in the Old Testament no trace of the active worship of such a god, he doubted whether such Old Testament names are really theophorous.1 It should, however, be remembered that exactly similar conditions are encountered in Babylonia. We have no evidence that the Amorites who settled there built any temple to ‘Amm, though it is certain that they did continue to honor him in naming their children. In both countries the names became traditional, but in both countries, in the judgment of the writer, the existence of the names points back to a time when 'Amm was actively worshipped as a deity as he was among the Qatabanians.
It is practically certain that the Amorites had other deities, though at present we cannot differentiate them from the gods of other Semites of the region. It was pointed out in Chapter III that the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the coastal lowlands, the ancestors of the Phoenicians, were probably simply Amorites who had settled in the lowlands. They were the “Niederlander” of the Amorites. Probably both in the highlands and the lowlands Amorites had mingled with an earlier population, perhaps of the troglodite type of civilization.
Another deity that was probably brought to the country by the Amorites was the god Adda, the same as Adad of Babylonia. The name of this god enters as an element into a number of proper names in the El-Amarna letters and in one letter the king of Egypt is said to “utter his voice in heaven like Adda”2—a phrase which identifies this deity with the weather-god. Adda was, of course, equivalent to the Aramaean Hadad, and his presence here may be due to Aramaean influence, but, as the Aramaeans seem to be just entering the country, and as the Amorites apparently carried this god into Babylonia, it is more probable that his presence in Palestine dates from their coming.
Our earliest knowledge of the Canaanite-Phoenician country concerns the city of Gebal. The French excavations on its site have in recent years revealed the fact that an Egyptian colony occupied this site from an antiquity at least as great as that of the last king of the
1	Ibid., p. 57 ff.
2	See Bezold and Budge, El-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum, no. 29, lines 13, 14.286
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Second Dynasty to the end of the Sixth Dynasty.1 Inscribed objects of Khasekhemui, last king of the Second Dynasty, are found here, as are those of Khufu, builder of the great pyramid, Menkure, builder of the third pyramid, both of the Fourth Dynasty, Unis of the Fifth Dynasty, Teti, Pepi I, and Pepi II, of the SixthDynasty. In this far-off time the name of the place was Kupna, a name of non-Semitic origin. Before the coming of the Egyptians the place had been founded by a prehistoric population whose slab-covered graves contain rude hand-made pottery and whose scrapers and flint-made knives persisted into the historical period. Probably they were cave-dwellers, like those of Gezer, for their sanctuary consisted of a cave. In accordance with a widespread custom of antiquity the Egyptians, when they came, also regarded the spot as sacred and built a temple over it. The inscriptions of this period reveal that a god and a goddess were worshipped at Kupna. In Egyptian the god was called Re, the Egyptian name for the sun-god and the goddess was called Hathor. Many centuries later Philo of Byblos, (the later name for Gebal) called the original deity of the town El, and claimed that the city came into existence when El encircled his own abode by a wall. He also claims that El circumcised himself and thus instituted the rite, and that he inaugu-ated the custom of human sacrifice.2 That El was a Phoenician deity a thousand years later than the Egyptian occupation, we have abundant evidence, as will presently appear: an actual human sacrifice was found connecting the prehistoric cave with the later temple. It would seem, therefore, that Philo, though he lived in the Roman period, has actually preserved a recollection of certain historical facts. El is the general Semitic term for deity. In ancient Semitic heathenism it is not ordinarily employed as a proper name of an individual deity. Reasons have, however, been adduced already in Chapter VI for believing that the Amorites had made El an individual deity before their migration from Arabia. His worship was brought to Gebal by the Amorites, and after their settlement there, he was identified with the god whom the Egyptians had worshipped under the name of Re. Philo’s statement that he circumcised himself is a recollection of the transformation of the
1	P. Montet, Byblos et VEgypte, Paris, 1928.
2	In Eusebius’ Evangelicae Preparation ed. E. H. Gifford, 1903, I, 10, 37 S.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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local god into a Semitic deity by this fusing process. The goddess of Gebal, who was in the Egyptian inscriptions called Hathor, was in later Phoenician inscriptions called Baalath Gebal, ‘Lady of Gebal.’1 It will appear later, when we discuss the Adonis myth, that she was indistinguishable in later Semitic thought from Ashtart, and there is little doubt that from the beginning she was a goddess of fertility whom the Semites readily identified with the great Semitic goddess of fertility.
Chronologically our next information concerning the religion of Phoenicia comes from a point nearly opposite the eastern end of the island of Cyprus, called today Ras Shamra. A little way from the headland so named, at a ruin called Minet-el-Beida, a peasant in March 1928, while working his field, accidentally uncovered a tomb. In 1929 a French expedition led by F. A. Schaeffer uncovered there the temple of a hitherto unsuspected town as well as several tombs. The town was a part of the kingdom of Ugarit. In 1930 and 1931 the work was continued.2 M. Schaeffer has determined that the town flourished through two periods represented by different levels, separated by a period of desolation when the town appears to have been burned. The first period began about 1900 B.C. or earlier; the second extended from ca. 1500-1200 B.C. During the period 1400-1300 B.C. the temple contained a flourishing school of scribes who possessed extensive syllabaries of Hurrian and Babylonian words, and who constructed out of cuneiform a Phoenician alphabet.3 In this alphabet they incribed on clay tablets an extensive myth of the death and ressurection of the vegetation-god4 and numerous other religious texts. Some of these have been found, though many are in a fragmentary condition. Fortunately three texts, though somewhat broken, are fairly intact, and reveal to us the names of the major deities of their pantheon and, in some cases, inform us of the functions attributed to them by their worshippers.
1	Cf. CIS, I no. 1.
2	Syria, X (1929), 285; XII, 1; XIII, 1.
3	Virolleaud’s publication of the texts in Syria X, 304; Bauer’s decipherment in his Entzifferung der Keilschrifttafeln von Ras Schamra, Halle, 1930; Dhorme’s in Revue Biblique, 1930, 571 and 1931, 32; Virolleaud’s in Syria, XII, 15.
4	Virolleaud’s publication of the texts and his treatment of them in Syria, XII, 193 and 350 and XIII, 113 ff.; Albright’s treatment in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, April, 1932, p. 15; the writer’s treatment in JAOS, LII, 221-231.288
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
One of these myths relates the death and resurrection of Alein, the vegetation-god; another gives an account of the circumstances connected with the building of his temple. At the head of the pantheon stood the god El. The land is called the “land of El;”1 El is distressed over the death of Alein and tries to find a substitute;2 it is El who breaks up the fields for new seed3 and to whom appeal is made to bring Alein back to life.4
By the side of El, Ashtar and Asherat were worshipped in the Ras Shamra region, but they too seem to have been pushed somewhat into the background. Ashtar, the primitive Semitic water-deity, was here a god as was the case in Moab and as was, in most cases, the corresponding deity in South Arabia. He appears in the epic but once. He became king while Alein the vegetation-god was dead; then Ashtar, the wise, became king and ruled in the heights (?) of the north. Beyond this reference Ashtar does not appear in the poems. In two fragmentary texts the name appears also in the feminine form, Ashtart, showing that they knew the deity also as a goddess.5
Beside the god El sat a goddess Elat. As Asherat is in the immediate context addressed in her place, it would seem that Elat is an epithet of Asherat and that EFs real consort was the old tree-goddess of primitive Semitic life. She is also called ‘Asherat of the sea/ probably because of a Hurrian or Aegsean element in the Phoenician civilization.6 It would seem that at Ras Shamra the earth-goddess,
1	The poem on Alein’s death in Syria, XII, 193 ff., col. i, 37.
2	Ibid., i, 15.
3	Ibid., iv, 37.
*Ibid., i, 4-12.
5	Nos. 19, 1. 16, and 23, 1. 3, in Virolleaud’s publication of the texts in Syria X, 304 ff.
6	It is possible that this epithet was given because of the merging of a Hurrian goddess with Asherat—a goddess that had, in some previous habitat of theirs, been associated with the sea. Attention was called in Ch. II, above, to the iEgaean influence exhibited in Hurrian pottery, and this epithet, ‘of the sea/ reminds one of the conception of the post-Homeric Greek poets, that Aphrodite was born of the foam of the sea. A part of the poem on the founding of Alein’s temple describes the banishment of Asherat to the ‘rivers’ with the bull of El-Deped, with whom she consorted and had sons and daughters. (Cf. Syria, XIII, 195 ff., col. ii, 4-14). This reminds one of the Greek myth of how Zeus mingled as a bull in a herd tended by Europa and appeared so tame that she mounted his back, when he bore her away to Crete, where she became by him the mother of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. Possibly the myth originated with the Hurrians and was by them imparted both to the Phoenicians and the iEgaean or Cretan culture.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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the consort of El whom the Egyptians had identified with their Hathor, had absorbed a goddess from across the sea and had been identified by the Semites with their tree-goddess Asherat and merged in her.
In consequence of the theme of the poem on the death of Alein other deities than these fundamental ones are not prominent. The writer’s attention is centered on Alein, the god of vegetation who has died and whose resurrection is sought. The name Alein is apparently a Phoenician form of the Hebrew word which in Hebrew means ‘a terebinth/ ‘an oak.’ He is thus a tree-god1—a fact which points both backward and forward. Looking backward we see that he is but the masculine form of that tree-divinity out of which Asherat was developed; looking forward we see that his name identifies him with the tree which was so prominent in the later worship of Adonis and Eshmun. In both poems Alein is continually called baal, or ‘lord’—a word that is a synonym of 9adon> ‘lord.’ Later at Gebal ’adon displaced baal and was graecized in Adonis as the name of this god. Another epithet of Alein in the poem is Zabul, ‘the honored one.’2 As the life of an agricultural community depends on the revival of vegetation and securing good crops, doubtless the worship of Alein, the mourning because of his death and rejoicing at his resurrection, occupied an important place in the religious year in ancient Ugarit.
The heroine of the first poem is the goddess ‘Anat, who pleads with El to restore her brother, and fights with Moth, the god of death, to release Alein.3 The name ‘Anat is derivable from a Semitic root which means ‘cohabitation/ ‘union.’ It is employed in Ex. 21; 10 for ‘marital rights.’ ‘Anat is regularly called in the poem BTLT, the Phoenician equivalent of a Hebrew word which means ‘virgin.’ If, however, ‘Anat is the goddess of cohabitation, it would be strange for her to be also called the ‘virgin.’ The paradox is due entirely to a later narrowing of the meaning of bHulah in Hebrew and Assyrian4 usage. The word is derived from a root
1 For another view, cf. Albright, Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society, XII, 1932, p. 4 f.
21 cannot follow Albright, Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society, XII, 7, who takes zebul to mean ‘dwelling.’
3	See columns i and ii of the poem.
4	Cf. Muss-Arnoldt, Assyrisch-Englisch-Deutsches Handworterbuch, p. 205 ff., and Bezold’s Babylonisch-Assyrisches Gloss ar, p. 95.290
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which means ‘divide/ ‘separate.’ In the Ishtar cult of Babylonia and the Ashtart cult of Palestine and Phoenicia, certain women were set apart for the service of the goddess of fertility. In Hebrew such a woman was called a qedeshah, a word which was sometimes employed in the sense of ‘harlot.’1 ‘Anat as BTLT was, therefore, not a virgin, but a qedeshah, a hierodule, a minister in the temple of those ceremonies of sacred magic which were thought to encourage the gods to perform the divine unions on which the begetting of animal life and the revival of vegetable life depended. This divine name for the mother-goddess is not found in Arabia or in Babylonia. It is a peculiar development of Phoenicia. It is clear, accordingly, that ‘Anat, ‘The cohabitress,’ was originally an epithet of the goddess of fertility, Asherat or Ashtart. As in this poem Ashtar is masculine, it is probable that ‘Anat was an offshoot of Asherat—a division created, as not infrequently has happened in the history of religion, by the use of an epithet. That this is the real origin of ‘Anat is confirmed by the fact that in the sequel Alein is called ‘son of Asherat.’2 Another deity of importance in the myth is Shepesh, a divine name unknown outside this group of texts. A study of the poem makes clear the fact that the name is a causative {shaphel) of the verb ndphash,3 for it occurs as a verb. Shepesh is accordingly ‘The one who makes to breathe’ or ‘The life-causer.’ Her regular epithet in the poem is ‘the light of the gods.’4 In another text Shepesh is coordinated with yareah, ‘the moon;’5 it follows, accordingly, that she was the sun. ‘The light of the gods’ was a most appropriate epithet of her. Another text confirms the solar character of Shepesh by speaking of her ‘setting.’ It is an interesting fact that the sun-god was not, so far as we know, worshipped under the name Shemesh by Amorites, Canaanites, or Phoenicians. There was but
ia Gen. 38:21, 22.
2	Cf. col. v. 1 of the poem.
3	It occurs as a verb and forms an Imperfect; cf. col. iv, 11.25, 36 and 46. Montgomery (JAOS, LIII, 113), regards Shepesh as a corruption of Shemesh, the Semitic word for ‘sun’, but for this there is no analogy, and in South Arabia, where Shams was a goddess, she was always known by some epithet like Nakrakh, until after 500 B. C.
4	See col. ii, 24; ii, 24.
5	Cf. no. 5, 1. 11, in Virolleaud’s publication of the texts in Syria, X.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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one shrine in Palestine where in the Old Testament period he was worshipped under the sun-name Shemesh, and that was Beth-Shemesh. In the period of the El-Amarna letters, however, that town was not called Beth-shemesh, but Bit-Nin-urta. It is probable, therefore, that this isolated instance of the worship of the sun is a late importation at Beth-shemesh. So far as the present writer knows, Shemesh was not a deity among the Amorite-Canaanite-Phcenician complex of peoples. How does it happen that Shepesh was worshipped at Ras Shamra under the name of the ‘life-causer? We have already noted that at Kupna (Gebal) in the early period the Egyptians called the chief god Re, identifying him with their sun-god. The Egyptian sun-god, whether called Aton or Re was regarded as a giver of life. Amenophis IV, who worshipped him under the name Aton, has celebrated this function of the sun-god in a well-known hymn,1 while one of the stock descriptions of other Egyptian kings was ‘giving life like Re/ These facts lead one to suspect that the application to the sun-deity of this peculiar epithet shepesh is due to long-continued Egyptian influence. Whatever the influence, Shepesh was a sun-goddess. The use of Shepesh as the subject of a feminine verb2 shows that the sun-deity was a goddess as in South Arabia.
Dagan, the corn-god, is mentioned once in the poem3 and his name occurs once in a list of gods,4 but nothing further is said of him. No details of the character attributed to him are known.
Moth or Death is personified in the poems and is regularly called ‘son of the gods/5 He is made to describe himself by his boastings6 in terms which befit his more modern designation, ‘king of terrors/ In what sense he was son of the gods, or why he was so regarded, we do not know. In the poem on the building of Alein’s temple the god Yadud appears a number of times.7 The name would appear
1	Cf. Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 371 ff., or the writers Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 501 ff.
2	See the Ras Shamra poem, col. vi, 11. 22, 23.
3	Col. i, 24.
4	See Virolleaud’s article in Syria, X, no. 9, 1. 3.
8 See the poem, ii, 13 and 31; vi, 7 and 24.
6	Col. ii, 13-25.
7	Syria, XIII, 195 ff., col. iff, 12, and vii, 46 ff. Possibly Yadud was originally an epithet of Alein, but, if so, he had become quite a distinct god.292
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to be an imperfect form of the root TH, To love.’ It is not clear in the poem what functions this god was thought to perform. He appears to have been an ally of Moth,1 the god of death. Centuries later, Philo of Byblos said that “El . . . had an only-begotten son Iadud”—a name clearly identical with Yadud, and which shows that this god survived to the Hellenistic period.2 In another passage he says that Astarte and Adodos,king of the gods, ruled the country.3 The name Adodos is clearly Adda or Adad, the weather god, whom we have already traced as an Amorite deity. The association of Adad with Ashtart as heads of the pantheon, which Philo mentions,4 belongs to a much later period than the Ugarit poems. It will appear as we proceed that it represents a conception of the pantheon brought about by the influence of the Aramaeans. A mutiliated tablet which seems to treat of the spring festival of the first fruits makes mention of Resheph, the fire-god.5 He seems to have been merely the fire-spirit, so far as one can judge.6
Further south in Phoenicia Adonis was sometimes known under the name Eshmun. In a list of temples, each of which is preceded by the word baal, there occurs baal beth Eshmuny, ‘lord of the temple of Eshmuny.’ It is probable, because of the fact that all the other names in the list seem to be names of places, that Eshmuny was also a place-name. In view, however, of the identity of Eshmun and Adonis and of Adonis and Alein, it is probable that in this text the ‘lord of Eshmuny’ was Alein. If so we have a possible clue to the way in which the name Eshmun came to be applied to this god—a fact that has never been satisfactorily explained. Doubtless a number of other deities in addition to those here mentioned were worshipped in this ancient city. Names of what may possibly have been other deities can be made out on the fragments of scribal prac-
1	Ibid., vii, 46-56.
2	In the poem on the death of Alein, the name El-D’ed occurs. D’ed is probably not from the root YH, but is a misspelling of El-Dep’ed, a hero who appears in both poems.
3	Quoted in Eusebius, Evangelicae Preparatio, ed. D. H. Gifford, Bk. i, ch. 10, 40c.
AIbid., 38c.
5	Cf. Virolleaud, Syria, X, no. 1, 7.
6	A number of other deities appear in the poems which it is not easy to explain. For example, in the poem on the building of Alein’s temple, there is a compound deity Kasher-w-kasas, at the nature of which one can only guess. Possibly such spirits were of Hurrian origin.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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tice tablets that have been recovered, but in the present state of our knowledge of these texts nothing definite can be said about them.1 There is reason to believe that the cults of Ras Shamra and of Gebal were, at least so far as the Alein myth and invocations were concerned, identical. It has already been noted that at Gebal a mother-goddess was worshipped who was called Baalath Gebal, ‘Lady (or Mistress) of Gebal.’ From documents discovered at Gebal or written by Philo of that city her worship can be traced down to the Roman period. Thus Ithobaal (?), son of Akhiram, king of Gebal in the time of Ramses II (thirteenth century B.C.), declared in the inscription on his father’s sarcophagus that Hathor would judge any king or governor who should open it.2 As this monarch was writing under a strong Egyptian suzerain, he reverted to the ancient usage of calling Baalat Hathor, but that he referred to the local goddess of Gebal, there can be no doubt. From the El-Amarna letters we learn that about 1360 B.C. a king named Rib-Addi ruled at Gebal.3 In some letters his name is spelled ri-ib-ad-di, in others ri-ib-ad-da, and in still others the ideogram for Adad (Hadad, Ram-man), is employed. Some deity, therefore, had now been equated with the weather-god of Babylonia. It may be that the Amorite-Canaanites had brought this god with them, though he appears in so slight a degree in our extant documents that possibly Adda is but an epithet for Baal-shamaim. In the next century another monarch, Yekhemelek, mentions Baal of Gebal, Baal Shamaim and “the holy gods.”4 This king substitutes a god for a goddess as the possessor of Gebal, and, centuries earlier than he was previously supposed to exist, names a baal of heaven, or the sky, also.5 He also tells us
1	In Poem II, i, 16-19 (Syria, XIII, 114, 116), the names of some of these appear, which are probably of Hurrian origin.
2	Syria, V, p. 135 ff.; Montet, Byblos et I’Egypte, p. 236.
3	Cf. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln, no. 84 ff.
4	Revue Biblique, XXXIX (1930), p. 321.
5	It is possible that Baal-shamaim is but another epithet for the masculine Ashtar. The reason for so thinking is that Atar, the Aramaean goddess, was called Atar-shamaim (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, II, 221), Ashtoreth of Palestine appears to have been called “queen of heaven,” (Jer. 7:18; 44:18 f.), and in North Africa, Tanith, an equivalent goddess, was called “the celestial virgin,” (Augustine, De Civitate Dei, II, 4). From the seventh century onward, then, the feminine form of Ashtar was definitely connected with the heavens. We have already found the masculine Ashtar in Phoenicia in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and in our extant sources his name never occurs294
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
what on a priori grounds we should expect, that the Gebalite pantheon contained other deities.* 1 Another king of Gebal, who was a contemporary of Osorkon I of Egypt, 924-895 B.C., Elibaal, consecrated to Baalat a votive offering accompanied by a prayer that the years of his reign might be prolonged,2 while Abibaal, of the same period, mentioned in a fragmentary inscription not only Baalat, but apparently the “lord (baal) of Gebal” as well.3 Yakhumelek, a king of Gebal in the Persian period, dedicated an altar to Baalat and extolled her for the favors she had bestowed upon him. According to Philo of Byblos (Gebal), Baalat was in reality Ashtart, for Philo identifies Kronos with El, the original god of Gebal, and says that he married his sister Astarte, lived with her and begat children. He also says that Astarte was the greatest of the goddesses, who, with Adodos, ruled the world. Adodos was, as already pointed out, Adda or Hadad. Philo adds: “The Phoenicians say that Astarte is Aphrodite.” At this point our information is supplemented by the account of Lucian, who says:4 “But I also saw in Byblos a great temple of Aphrodite of Byblos” (this temple is still pictured on an ancient coin5), “in which also the rites of Adonis are performed. I also made inquiry concerning the rites; for they tell the deed which was done to Adonis by a boar in their own country, and in memory of his suffering they beat their breasts every year, and wail and celebrate these rites, and institute great lamentation throughout the country. But when they have bewailed and lamented, first they perform funeral rites for Adonis as though he were dead, but afterward upon another day they say that he lives, and they cast (dust) into the air and shave their heads as the Egyptians do when Apis dies. But women who do not wish to be shaven pay the following penalty: on a certain day they stand for
again. It seems possible, therefore, as gods are seldom suddenly forgotten, that he must have been worshipped under some other epithet, and the instances cited of the connection of his female counterpart with the heavens lends plausibility to the view that Ashtar became Baal-shamaim.
1	Probably the deities with which the Ras Shamra texts have made us familiar.
2	Montet, op. cit., p. 52.
z Syria, V, p. 145; Montet, op. cit., p. 53.
4 De Syria Dea, §6.
6 See Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phoenizier, p. 200 and Journal of Hellenic Studies, IX, 215.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
295
prostitution at the proper time; and the market is open to strangers only, and the pay goes as a sacrifice to Aphrodite.”
Five miles south of Gebal is a river which in the days of Philo and Lucian was called the river of Adonis. It flows down to the sea through a deep gorge in the mountain. Halfway up and close to the gorge are the ruins of an ancient temple still called ‘House of King Adonis.’ Here, according to Lucian, the ‘Tombs of Adonis’1 were shown in antiquity. Reliefs showing Adonis struggling with the boar were there displayed. Farther up directly under the high crest of Lebanon one comes to a great amphitheatre. As one goes on, three successive caves are reached, in each of which is a large spring which pours forth with a roar waters that mingle to form the beginnings of the river.2 This is the apheq, or ‘cleft.’ In the biblical book of Joshua it became a proper name, Aphek,3 as it did in Lucian’s Aphaca.
Apparently the scene of the Ras Shamra poem of the death of Alein was laid in this same locality. It refers at the beginning to El, who purifies the rivers in “the cleft [apheq] of the two abysses”— the two abysses being the subterranean ‘deep’ which calls to the supercelestial ‘deep’ as in Ps. 42:7, in which many scholars have seen a poetical description of the roaring of the waters as they rush forth from the caverns in which the river Jordan is born. The conditions at the Jordan’s source and at that of the river of Adonis were similar and apparently called forth similar poetic descriptions. Thus the poem from Ras Shamra, by this reference, reveals the kinship, if not the identity, of its cult with that of Gebal, and presumably with the cults of other Phoenician cities.
Before taking up the pantheons of the important cities Tyre and Sidon, it will be convenient to note the information which has accidentally come to us from some less noteworthy localities. Thus from Hamon, the Hammon of Joshua 19:28, a small Phoenician town, we have two inscriptions4 which mention a god Malak-Ashtart, or ‘Messenger of Ashtart,’ who is called the ‘god of Hamon.’ He
1	De Syria Dea, §9.
2	For a photograph of the river, see A. T. Olmstead’s History of Palestine and Syria, Fig. 27.
3Ch. 13:4.
4 Cf. CIS, I, 8, and Heuzey, Comptes Rendus} 1902, pp. 200-206.296
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
is called in a Greek text of the Roman period, Mercury who inhabits the village of Hamon/1 Since Mercury was the Latin name of the Greek Hermes who was originally in Greek religion the spirit of the phallic post, or herm, placed above the graves of the dead as a symbol of the renewal of life and was then regarded as a means of communication with the dead,2 it seems obvious that Malak-Ashtart was but another name for Adonis. The name also guarantees the presence of Ashtart in the cult of the town. An inscription from a neighboring site3 records the building of a pillared hall in the year 222 B.C. by Malak-Malak Ashtart4 and the servants of the lord of Hamon for Ashtart in the shrine of the god of Hamon,—a statement which confirms all the inferences suggested by the inscription just quoted. This last inscription is not only dated in the twenty-sixth year of Ptolemy Euergetes of Egypt, but also in the thirty-fifth year of the people of Tyre, thus revealing the proximity of this place to Tyre. We thus have monumental evidence of the worship of Ashtart and Adonis in the hinterland of Tyre down to the Greek and Roman periods.
From Tyre itself no appropriate epigraphic material is known to me. From a bilingual inscription found in Malta5 we learn that the god of Tyre was called Melqart, a contraction of two Phoenician words meaning ‘king of the city/ The inscription equates him with Heracles. A fragmentary inscription from Tyre6 contains the proper name Bod-Melqart, ‘Servant of Melqart/ which confirms this fact. For further information we are dependent upon Greek writers. Herodotus in the fifth century B.C. mentions the temple of this god at Tyre as the temple of Heracles7—a statement repeated by Dion and Menander as quoted by Josephus. Philo of Byblos says:8 “Astarte set the head of a bull upon her own head as a mark of
1	Cf. Lidzbarski, Epemerisfuer Semitische Epigraphik, I, 351.
2	See the writer’s Religions of the World, 3rd ed., Chicago, 1929, p. 247.
3	The Ma'sub inscription. Lidzbarski, Handbuch der Nordsemitische Epigraphik, Tafel V.
4	G. A. Cooke translates this “The envoys of Mlk-Ashtart;” cf. his North Semitic Inscriptions, p. 48.
5	CIS, no. 122.
6	Cf., e.g., G. A. Cooke, North Semitic Inscriptions, no. 8, p. 43.
7	Book II, 44.
8	Cf. Eusebius, op. cit., I, 10, 38c.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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royalty; and in traveling around the world she found a star that had fallen from the sky, which she took and consecrated in the holy island of Tyre.” This statement confirms the implication suggested by the inscriptions from Hamon that Astarte was worshipped at Tyre; it also alludes to the fact that she was identified with the star Venus and that her agricultural symbol was the cow. Josephus also states that Ethbaal, king of Tyre and father-in-law of Jezebel the wife of Ahab, in addition to the temple of Melqart, built a temple to Ashtart in which Ethbaal was himself priest.1 The worship of Adonis as Malak-Ashtart in the immediate neighborhood of Tyre proves, when one considers the unity of the Phoenician civilization, that this god under some one of his names must also have been worshipped at Tyre. It is probable that Melqart was El or Ashtar under another name and that the vegetation-god who died and arose again formed at least a third member of the pantheon.
At Sidon Ashtart was the chief deity. Tabnith tells us that both he and his father were her priests,2 and Eshmunazer II says that his mother was her priestess.3 Here the mother-goddess retained so much of her primitive independence and her cult so flourished and spread its influence over the Israelitish highlands that the Hebrews called her “the abomination of the Sidonians.4” Eshmunazer built her temple and also a temple for Eshmun “at the holy spring, the well of Yidlal in the mountain”5—a phrase which probably refers to the sacred river above Gebal. In a subsequent section of his inscription he claims to have built a temple for the “Baal of Sidon, and for Ashtart of the name of Baal.” This last is a peculiar description of a goddess. As we have noted in a preceding chapter, Athtar in South Arabia was both a god and a goddess, and I formerly thought that “Ashtart of the name of Baal” was a goddess partially transformed into a god.6 It may well be, however, that Eshmunazer adopted this method of distinguishing the Ashtart who was Baal’s consort and had a shrine in his temple from the Ashtart
1	Antiquities, VIII, 5, 3 and Contra Apion, I, 18.
2	See e.g., G. A. Cooke, op. cit., p. 26.
3	CIS, I, 3.14 f.
4	Cf. 2 Kgs 23.13.
5	CIS, I, 3 16, 17.
6	Semitic Origins, 244298
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
who was the mother of Eshmun-Adonis, who had a temple of her own.
Sidon was one of the headquarters of the Phoenician shipping trade, and its goddess became in consequence the patroness of mariners. She is often pictured on Sidonian coins standing on the prow of a galley with one hand outstretched, holding a crown and pointing the ship on its way, a device adopted on the coins of other Phoenician cities. According to Lucian, Ashtart of Sidon was also identified with the moon.1
Bodashtart, a later king of Sidon, built a temple to Eshmun within ancient Sidon itself, which was excavated some years ago by the Imperial Ottoman Museum. It contained nine exemplars of an inscription commemorating the event.2 Another inscription found at Sidon is dedicated to the god Shalman.3 Had we fuller information, doubtless we should find that the pantheons of Tyre and Sidon were as extensive as that of Ugarit. Our sources, however, make it clear that the cults in these cities which most impressed the ancient world were the cults of Ashtart and Adonis-Eshmun.
From Phoenicia sailors plied their ships to all parts of the Mediterranean world. The Phoenicians were the Englishmen and Hollanders of antiquity. In time they planted colonies at points where trade was good, and, as was natural, shrines to their most cherished deities were erected in these colonies. Four such settlements can be traced in the island of Cyprus. The oldest of these was at Paphos on the southwestern coast. How early Semitic worship was planted here, we cannot tell. In the Homeric poems Aphrodite is already spoken of as Cyprian,4 and her temple at Paphos is referred to.5 It was then no doubt very old. Tradition assigned its foundations to one Cinyras,6 who plays a considerable part in Cyprian mythology. The priests of the Paphian shrine were afterward supposed to be his descendants and bore his name.7 Of the early history of this wor-
1	Lucian, De Syria Dea, §4.
2	Cf. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, II, 153 if.
3	Cf. e.g., G. A. Cooke, op. cit., p. 42.
4	Iliad, V, 330.
5	Odyssey, VIII, 362 ff.
6	Iliad, XI, 19-23, and Tacitus, Hist., II, 2, 3.
7	Tacitus, Hist., II, 2, 3.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
299
ship we have no real data. These Greek legends and myths can hardly be historical. A number of the German Assyriologists believe that the letters of the king of Alashia1 to the king of Egypt, which were found in the El-Amarna correspondence, are really letters from Cyprus;; but even if they are, they make no mention of religious matters, and so leave us as much in the dark with reference to the religious status of the island in the fifteenth century B.C. as though we did not possess them. The Greek inscriptions written in the Cypriote syllabary testify to the existence of the goddess at Paphos, but do little more than that.2 Monuments have been recovered which were dedicated to the goddess at Paphos on behalf of various Ptolemies from 164-88 B.C.,3 as well as on behalf of the Roman Emperor Tiberius.4 These attest that the worship was flourishing during those centuries. From Strabo5 and Pausanias6 we learn that the shrine at Paphos was still important in their days, while Johannes Lydus7 in the sixth century A.D. implies that the worship had then ceased.
The temple of Ashtart at Paphos has been excavated and its form may be studied in considerable detail.8 It was evidently a Semitic temple, built on the same general plan as the temple of Solomon at Jerusalem, but with considerable variations in details. It was more than once in later times destroyed by earthquakes, and rebuilt by the Romans.9 In the temple there was no statue of the goddess, but she was represented by an old Semitic masseba.10 Doves were sacred to her11 and many images of them have been found in her temple. She was regarded as a mother-goddess, and was addressed as “mother.” The Semitic feast of the old mother-goddess was kept
1	Cf. KB., Vol. V, Nos. 25-32.
2	Cf. Collitz, Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, Gottingen, 1884, Vol. I, p. 13, No. 1.
3	Cf. Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. IX, pp. 229-231, No. 14; p. 232 ff., No. 21; p. 233 ff., No. 24; p. 240, No. 50.
4	Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. IX, p. 227, No. 6.
6 XIV, 6, 3 (683).
6	VIII, 5, 2.
7	Be Mensibus, IV, 45.
8	Cf. Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. IX, pp. 193-215.
9	Cf. Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. IX, p. 193.
10	Tacitus, Hist., II, 3; Serv., Aen., I, 720. Cf. Hebraica, Vol. X, p. 46 ff.
11	Antiphanes, ap. Athen., VI, 71, p. 257; XIV, 70, p. 655, and the “Paphiae colum-bae” of Martial (VIII, 28).300
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
to her in the springtime, when a lamb or sheep was sacrified to her.1 Only male victims were sacrified to her, and kids were regarded as the best for the purposes of divination, in which her priests were thought to be especially skilful.2 No blood was shed upon her altar, and though the masseba stood in the open air it was thought that it was never rained upon.3 The devotees of the goddess were initiated by impure rites,4 and parents often dedicated their children to the goddess.5 In later times there was much admixture of Greek element into the Paphian worship, but nevertheless the Semitic type of goddess on the whole prevailed.6 It was from Cyprus, as the Greeks themselves believed, that the worship of Aphrodite spread to the islands and coastlands of Greece.
On the south side of the island near its eastern end there were in the fourth century B.C. two Phoenician settlements which were united in a petty kingdom which was subject first to Persia and then to Egypt. Inscriptions from its monarchs are found dated at different periods from 396 to 323 B.C. The places referred to were Kiti and Adil, in Greek Kition and Idalion. How early these settlements were founded, we do not know. The oldest inscription in the Phoenician script yet found in Cyprus was inscribed on a bronze bowl in characters of the antiquity of the Zendjirli inscriptions.7 It dedicates the bowl to Baal of Lebanon. Probably, therefore, in the eighth century there was in Cyprus a colony that had so recently come from Phoenicia that they still worshipped the god whom they had venerated when on the mainland. It was found by an idler at Limassol, and was written by the governor of Qarath-khadasht, or ‘Newtown/ Qarath-khadasht was the name of Car-
1	Johannes Lydus, De Mensibus, 45.
2	Tacitus, Hist., II, 3.
3	Tacitus, Hist., II, 3.
4	Clement of Alexandria, Protreptikos pros Hellenes, pp. 12, 13; Arnobius, adv. Gentes, V, 19; Justin, XVIII, 5. Herodotus, after describing the impure rites of this goddess at Babylon (I, 199), adds “In some parts of Cyrpus there is a custom very
similar.”
6 Cf. Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. IX, p. 228, No. 8; p. 235, No. 33; p. 236, Nos 35, 39; p. 237, Nos. 41, 42.
6	Cf. Dyer, The Gods of Greece, ch. VII, and Driver in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, I, 170. That vegetation was thought to be connected with the goddess at Cyprus as in ancient Arabia is shown in Ohnefalsch-Richter’s Kypros, pp. 118-126.
7	CIS, I, No. 5.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
301
thage in North Africa, and it is possible that the bowl may have been brought thence to Cyprus. It is, however, quite as possible that there was a Phoenician ‘Newtown’ in Cyrpus. Whether the settlements at Kition and Idalion were equally old, we do not know.
At Kition there was a large temple—apparently a temple of Ash-tart. If the whole temple was not hers, it certainly contained a shrine to her. A fragmentary inscription recorded when intact1 the payments for a month made to the attachés of the temple. There were builders or repairers of the temple of Ashtart, door-keepers, fire-kindlers (?), servants, sacrificers, servants performing the service, boys, barbers, stone-cutters, a chief scribe named Abd-Eshmun, young women2 and “dogs” (i.e., Sodomites)3 and Abdobast, the man of Qarath-khadasht.4 In addition to these, provision is made for persons of the house which is by the pillars of Mekal.5 Provision appears also to be made for the sacrifice of ‘sin offerings’6 and ‘peace offerings,’7 and sacrifices were provided for the feast of the new moon.8 The whole equipment reveals a temple of the mother-goddess with all its provisions for exercising that religious sexual magic by which it was believed that the gods could be influenced to give large families and good crops. Another inscription9 which was without doubt dedicated to Ashtart calls her the ‘girded’ (or ‘mighty’) ‘mother.”
1	CIS, I, 86.
2	The word for “young women” is *alamoth, the plural of the word in Isa. 7:14, translated by the LXX icapdevos. Its parallelism to kelabim in the next line shows that here it is employed for qedashoth.
3	It is probably thus that the term kelâbîm, ‘dogs,’ should be interpreted. The term occurs in Deut. 23:17,18, where it seems to mean ‘male priestly prostitute’ (cf. Driver’s Deuteronomy, p. 264 ff., and Steuernagle’s Deuteronomium und Joshua, p. 86 ff.). Clement of Alexandria so understood the term and rendered it ‘fornicator’ (Paidagogos III, 3). One consecrated to a god was perhaps so called because of his fidelity in following his god (cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., p. 292). We have a Biblical instance in Caleb, i.e., “the dog who followed Yahwe” in Num. 32:12. This usage probably extended to Babylonia, for the real names of the kings of Lagash called Ur-Nina and Ur-Bau, were probably Kalbi-Nina and Kalbi-Bau (cf. Radau, Early Babylonian History, p. 144) i.e., ‘Dog of Nina’ and ‘Dog of Bau.’
4	The Cyprian “Newtown” may not, therefore, have been far away.
5	This seems to be the same as the god of Beth-shan; see below.
6	Face A, 1. 9.
7	Face B, 1. 4.
8	Face B, 11. 2 and 3.
9	CIS, I, 13.302
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
From the fact that in the few inscriptions which we have from Kition the name of the god Eshmun appears as a constituent element of a number of proper names/ it seems safe to infer that the vegetation-god whose worship always accompanied that of Ashtart was, in Cyprus, called Eshmun. In the inscriptions which come from Idalion objects are dedicated to the god Resheph.2 It seems probable, therefore, that there was at Idalion a temple to the fire-god. In one of them he is called Resheph khes,z which has been understood to mean 'Apollo with the arrow/ It is probable that the shrine at Idalion was, therefore, not originally a native Semitic shrine, but an older Hellenic temple of Apollo.
Outside the village of Larnax Lapethos, near the ancient Lape-thos on the north side of the island of Cyprus is a bilingual inscription carved on a rock.4 It consecrates an altar to 'Anath, 'the strength of life’—called in the Greek text 'Athena, victorious deliverer’—and 'to the lord of kings, Ptolemy.’ The association of the goddess 'Anath with the king of Egypt as though he too were a god, is interesting. The inscription bears witness to the fact that in the fourth century B.C. the goddess *Anath was worshipped in Cyprus. Another and much longer inscription from the same place5 attests the existence of a temple to Melqart at this place in the fourth century B.C. This colony was, then, an offshoot of Tyre.
Another Phoenician colony was at some time established on the island of Malta. It left at least one inscription6 which, though fragmentary, reveals the fact that they built three sanctuaries, one to a god whose name is broken away; one to Sadam, the lord (<baal), probably a native Maltese deity, and one to Ashtart. Among the proper names which occur in the inscription, two contain the name of the god Eshmun as a constituent element. It is probable therefore that in Malta as in Cyprus Eshmun was the name by which the son of the mother-goddess was worshipped. The inscription is thought to date not later than 150 B.C. Another inscription shows
1	Cf. CIS, I, nos. 44, 47.
2	CIS, I, 90, 91, 92 and 93.
3	CIS, I, 10.
4	CIS, I, 95.
5	Clermont-Ganneau, Album d’Antiquités orientales, pi. XLIII; cf. G. A. Cooke, North Semitic Inscripions, p. 82 ff. and Lidzbarski, Altsemitische Texte, no. 36.
6	CIS, I, 132.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
303
that the god Baal-Hamon was worshipped there. In Malta, then, the popular Phoenician cult blended with the non-Semitic cult of the natives. A very important and ancient seat of it was at Eryx in the island of Sicily, whence its influence spread through that island to Carthage and into many parts of Italy, extending especially to Rome.1 In Sicily the goddess was as elsewhere served by a troop of female priestesses,2 whose character and functions we can from our previous knowledge easily divine. Here the dove was also sacred to the goddess, and there were two feasts, in reality parts of the same festival, the dates of which were supposed to be connected with the flight of the doves.3 It is clear from the evidence already cited that in the Phoenician colonies of the Mediterranean islands all the essential features of the old Semitic mother-goddess were preserved. At each sanctuary a certain local coloring was given to her myths, as was natural and as was the case in other places; nevertheless she remained the unmarried mother-goddess, fostering sexual love, maintaining a retinue of priests and priestesses who kept the atmosphere of social life impure by perpetuating under the guise of religion the long outgrown customs of a barbarous civilization.
The largest and most notable of all the Phoenician colonies in the Mediterranean was Qarath-khadasht or ‘Newtown7, corrupted by the Romans to ‘Carthgo7 or Carthage on the southern coast of the Mediterranean in North Africa. According to an ancient tradition it was a colony of the city of Tyre and is thought by some to have been founded about 825 B.C. At Carthage Phoenicians mingled with native Hamitic Berber tribes and formed a new and vigorous state in which the Semitic strain was the ruling element. So vigorous was this Punic civilization that in the third century before our era it contested with Rome the dominion of the western Mediterranean basin. At Carthage as early as the third or fourth century B.C. there existed a large temple of a god who was known as Baal. That epithet was accompanied by another element, but, as the stone inscription is at that point imperfect, we do not know what it was. In numerous votive inscriptions mention is made of
1	Cf. Diodorus Siculus, IV, 83; Pausanius. VIII, 24, 6; Polybius, I, 55; Strabo, VI, 2, 5; and Virg. Aen., I, 750.
2	Strabo, VI, 2, 5.
3	Aelian, De Natura Animalium, IV, 2.304
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
a male god called Baal-Hamon, a name which we have already found in the neighborhood of Tyre.1 Whether this Carthaginean deity is identical with the god of Hamon near Tyre, having been brought to Africa by emigrants from that region, or whether the name originated independently in Africa, we cannot now determine, but the inscription to the “Baal of Lebanon”2 found in Cyprus shows that such a transfer was possible. However that may be, the inscription found at Marseilles3 with its fragmentary companion found at Carthage4 shows that a temple to this god existed, equipped with a priesthood and altars and a tariff for different kinds of sacrifices, which implies a highly organized cult parallel in its development to that of post-exilic Judaism. Another inscription now preserved in the museum at Carthage5 speaks of the building of new sanctuaries to Ashtart and Tanith in Lebanon—not, of course, the Lebanon in Syria, but some eminence in or near Carthage so named because of its white stone. Ashtart is the Semitic goddess with which we have become so familiar, but Tanith is a new name not found in other parts of the Semitic world.
In the numerous votive inscriptions which have been found in the Carthaginean district, the chief goddess is Tanith. The name of Ashtart is quite displaced by hers. Tanith is usually associated with The lord* (’Adon) Baal-Hamon, and is most often called Tanith pn baal—‘Tanith of the face of Baal* or ‘Tanith before Baal/ or ‘Tanith in the presence of Baal.’6 What is the meaning of these facts? Thirty years ago the writer regarded Tanith as identical with Ashtart, and supposed that the name Ashtart had been displaced by an epithet derived from the root ytn, ‘to give’ and meaning ‘The giver/ ‘multiplier/ or ‘increaser.’7 While the formation of such an epithet is possible, it does not, so far as the writer knows, occur elsewhere. Thirty years ago the writer did not appreciate as he does now that none of the Semitic nationalities is a pure develop-
1	In the form of El Hamon, in one of the Umm-el-Awamid inscriptions, cf., e.g., Lidzbarski, Altsemitische Texte, no. 13.
2	See CIS, I, 5 and above.
3	CIS, I, 165.
4	CIS, I, 167.
6 Cf. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, I, 19 £f.
6	As in CIS, I, 180, and passim, especially in CIS, vol. III.
7	Semitic Origins, p. 253, n. 6.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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ment from Semitic stock, but that all of them have blended with populations that were in the lands where they settled before them. The Punic peoples were no exception. The part of North Africa about Carthage was a part of the cradle-land of the Hamito-Semitic race. In this general region Hamitic dialects have survived in a more primitive purity than in other parts of the world. When Phoenicians settled in Carthage they invaded the land of a very old Hamitic people, and doubtless, in accordance with an ancient point of view that is now well recognized, propitiated by worship the principal Hamitic deity of the region. This deity was, we believe, Tanith, a goddess of fertility. She was regarded as the giver of life and blessings. The writer has come to think that she was, like Alein, a tree-divinity. In ancient Egyptian tnt1 followed by the determinative for ‘tree* denoted ‘a tree’ or ‘a fruit/ and in Tuareg, a modern Hamitic dialect, tadent, from a root dn, still designates a kind of tree.2 It seems probable, therefore, that Tanith was a pre-Phoenician goddess of fertility of the Hamites and that they had identified her with a tree, and that she was so popular that after the coming of the Phoenicians they too worshipped her to such a degree that she largely displaced their native goddess Ashtart. What the epithet pn baal may mean is problematical. Perhaps the goddess may have been represented by an idol that had a masculine beard, but it is quite possible that the epithet may mean no more than that she took precedence of Baal.
Tanith was a mother-goddess, and St. Augustine bore witness that in the fifth century of our era her worship persisted and that on her festal days indecent plays were enacted, immodest songs were sung, and the emotions of the people were stirred to orgies of fury.3
The identity of Tanith and Dido has long been recognized.4 It seems to the writer less likely that Dido is a corruption of Tanith than that Dido is an epithet connected with the Semitic root död, 'love.’ A deity Yadud, going back to a possible Dod, has already
1	Cf. Erman und Grapow, Wörterbuch, V, 313.
2	Foucauld, Dictionnaire abregé Touareg-Français, publiée par R. Basset, Algiers, 1918, vol. I, p. 147.
3	De Civitate Dei, II, 4.
4	Cf. Georg Hoffman, Ueber einige phoen. Inschriften, p. 32, and W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., p. 374.306
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been traced in Phoenicia;1 in North Africa the epithet may have been applied to the goddess. However the name Dido may have originated, of the identity of her figure with that of Tanith there can be no doubt. The story of Dido’s love for .¿Eneas as told by Vergil2 is therefore another source of information of the nature of her cult. Farnell has pointed out3 that the whole story of the wanderings of iEneas and of Dido’s love for him is probably but a translation into poetry of the myths of this cult.
The temple of Tanith-Dido was in the fourth century of our era situated a little outside the old city of Carthage in a thorny jungle.4 The popular imagination portrayed it as inhabited by asps and dragons who were the guardians of her sanctuary. Outside its walls a pyre was erected each year and the goddess was thought to throw herself into its flames, as Dido did in Vergil’s story. Vergil represents her as doing it for love of .¿Eneas; in the cult it was doubtless a passion play depicting her love for Adonis-Eshmun, Baal-Hamon, or whatever the name of the dead vegetation-god may have borne in North Africa. In the accounts of the celebrations of the death of Adonis in Asia there is no parallel to this feature of the Carthaginian ritual. It was probably introduced from the ceremonies of the older Hamitic Tanith and was, no doubt, due to the warmer and more passionate nature of the Africans. The goddess as actually worshipped was not a tree-goddess only, but of vegetation generally. Tertullian5 called her Ceres.6
It has been noted above7 that in the fourteenth century B.C. Amorites were worshipping a goddess Ashirat in the territory afterward inhabited by the Hebrew tribe of Asher. In Judges 3:7 the plural, ‘Baalim and Asheroth’ is employed to designate the Cana-anite gods and goddesses instead of ‘Baalim and Ashtaroth’ which is found in many passages.8 Numerous allusions in the Old Testa-
1	Cf. above, p. 29If.
2	jlEneid, Bk. IV.
3	Cults of the Greek States, II, 638-642.
4	Cf. Justin, XIX, 1, and W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., p. 374.
5	Ad Uxorem, I, 6 and De Exhortatione Castitas, 15.
6	A Punic inscription from Carthage, from the period of its ascendancy, is a tahella devotionis to a goddess Hawath, perhaps a serpent-goddess, of whom nothing else is known. Cf. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, I, 26-34.
7	See above, p. 88.
3 Cf. Jud. 2:13; 10:6; 1 Sam. 7:4; 12:10, etc.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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ment reveal the fact that before the Hebrew occupation the cult which we have traced through Phoenicia, the islands of the Mediterranean, and North Africa, had spread over the whole of agricultural Palestine. Every important town had its local Baal, who, as the late W. R. Smith showed,1 was believed to be the owner of its spring-watered or rain-watered land. This god was everywhere accompanied by his consort Ashtart, whose name has been perverted in the Old Testament books as we have them to Ashtoreth. Each Baal was the numen of his locality. Possibly in their myths local differences existed, but fundamentally the Baals and the Ashtoreths were identical with the deities of the Amorites and Canaanites whose worship has already been studied. The Old Testament references to its immoralities and ministers of impurity leave no room for doubt on this point.2 The materials do not exist from which to make a study of these many deities, and if they did we should find them, in their general features, identical with the cults of the Phoenicians. For the most part these Baals and Ashtoreths were worshipped in open-air shrines, or ‘high places.’ One such ‘high place/ that at Gezer, has been excavated, and its “pillars” which symbolized the male organ of fertility, and its many Astarte plaques have been in part revealed.3 Many ancient elements were fused in its worship. One of these was the veneration of sacred serpents. Somewhat similar evidences of the realistic symbols of the worship of the mother-goddess have been found at other Palestinian sites.4
The mixture of Amorites and Canaanites in Palestine had by the fourteenth century B.C. introduced the worship of the god El,
1	Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., pp. 97 if., 109 if.
2	Cf. 1 Kgs. 11:5 ff., 33 ff.; 2 Kgs. 23:13 iff.; Deut. 23:17, 18.
3	See R. A. S. Macalister, The Excavation of Gezer, I, 51, 105-107; II, 381-404.
4	In connection with the worship of this goddess in Palestine a word should be said concerning the temple of a similar goddess at Ashkelon to which Herodotus (I, 105) bears witness—a temple which was in existence in his day. The character of the worship, as he describes it, identifies the goddess with Ashtoreth. The probability is that her cult was planted there by the Amorite-Canaanites before the coming of the Philistines. If the Philistines came to Palestine from Crete, or by way of Crete, as is now often supposed, they would maintain the worship as the worship of the primitive Cretan goddess of fertility whose cult in that island reaches far back into prehistoric time. (See the writer’s Religions of the World, 3rd ed. p. 244 f. and the references given there.) Later writers, like Diodorus Siculus (II, 4) and Ovid (Metamorphoses, IV, 44-46) identify her with the Syrian goddess Atargatis. On the last-mentioned deity see below, p. 318f.308
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
whose origin we have traced among the Amorites. In the period represented by the El-Amarna letters his presence is vouched for in the Shephelah by the names of Yabni-el of Lachish,1 whose name meant ‘El has created’ and Malki-el2 (‘My king is El’), the name of whose city is lost but who lived apparently in the region of Gezer and Keilah.3 The worship of El can also be traced at a number of other points by means of the Old Testament, in passages where it is evident that an older cult is being fused with the cult of Yahweh. Thus in Gen. 35:7 we learn of El of Bethel. He is also mentioned in Gen. 31:13, though in that passage the exigency of the story has led the narrator to prefix the article as though El were a generic term. In Gen. 21:13 we hear of El ‘Olam of Beersheba. If we accept the present pointing of the text it would mean ‘El-eternal,’ (a meaning unthinkable here), but it is quite possible that it meant ‘The hidden El.’4 In Gen. 16:13 we hear of El Ro’i, ‘El who sees me’(?). In Gen. 17:1 and 5 we hear of El-Shaddai, perhaps, ‘El of the hill-country.’5 The chapter is from P, the latest of the Penta-teuchal strata, and is one of its author’s favorite terms (cf. Ex. 6:2); it is possible, however, that he has here preserved a memory that El was once worshipped in the mountainous region of central Palestine. In Jud. 9:46 we learn that El was worshipped at Shechem, though in Jud. 9:4 the epithet baal is substituted for El. In the late midrash which now constitutes Gen. 14 the god of Jerusalem is called El Elyon, ‘El, exalted one’ (Gen. 14:18 ff.). While it is probable that the adjective ‘Elyon’ is a late addition, it may well be that the passage preserves the memory of an Amorite-Canaanite worship of El at Jerusalem. However this may be, there can be no doubt of the wide distribution of this cult in Palestine.
1	Cf. Winckler und Abel, Thontafeln von El-Amarna, no. 124.
2	Cf. Winckler und Abel, op. cu., nos. 108-110, and Bezold and Budge, Tablets from Tell-el-Amarna in the British Museum, nos. 62 and 63.
3	Cf. Winckler und Abel, op. cit., no. 106.
4	This suggestion is based on the probable meaning of these radicals in Eccl. 3:11, where we should point elem and translate ‘ignorance/ the meaning ‘ignorance* arising from that which is ‘hidden/ ‘unknown*—that being apparently the original meaning of the root; see the writer’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes in the International Critical Commentary, p. 105. It may be, however, that in the phrase before us *aim is the name of some cult object as it apparently is in a much later Punic inscription from Carthage; cf. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, I, 17 ff., line 3, and Lidzbarski’s comments.
5	The writer is, of course, aware that there are other interpretations of this term.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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In the Israelitish period one town was called Beth-shemesh, or the temple of the sun-god. In the time of the El-Amarna letters, it was called Beth-Nin-urta.1 It has already been shown that Nin-urta was originally a Babylonian goddess of fertility, though she was afterward transformed into a god.2 Sun-worship, at least under that name, does not appear among the West Semites except among the Aramaeans. This will appear more clearly as we proceed. It is probable, therefore, that the worship of the sun at Beth-she-mesh was not introduced until after the coming of the Aramaeans.
At Beth-shan, where the Plain of Jezreel unites with the Jordan Valley, a temple of the god Mekal has in recent years been excavated.3 This temple flourished from about 1460 to 1225 B.C., having been rebuilt by successive Egyptian kings, from Thothmes III to Ramses II. Its deity Mekal appears to have been associated with a serpent-goddess.4 No inscriptions have come to light to reveal to us the conceptions which were entertained of him. One would expect him to be a nature-god of fertility. Perhaps he is identical with the Mekal mentioned in an inscription from Kition in Cyprus,5 but that inscription leaves us quite in the dark as to the nature of the divinity. Possibly his name meant ‘He who causes to eat/ i.e., the giver of food. The statue of a serpent-goddess, dating about 1700-1600 B.C. was found at Tell Beit Mirsim, but we know nothing of her worship.6
The Moabites, who dwelt in the elevated lands between the Dead Sea and the desert, worshipped a deity Chemosh whom Mesha, king of Moab, calls Ashtar-Chemosh.7 This god was the national god
1	See Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln, no. 290.
2	See above, ch, VIII, p. 269f.
3	See the article by Rowe and Vincent in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund for January, 1931.
4	Five serpent-cult objects were found. One was a serpent having human breasts
with a milk-bowl below them; another, a serpent having human breasts and another serpent about its neck. These indicate a goddess. The name Beth-shan, ‘Temple of shan’ suggest that here a serpent-goddess was worshipped who was called Shan (cf. the Babylonian Sakhan, Deimel, Pantheon Babylonicum, no. 2826). Whether Mekal was developed out of her, or became her consort, cannot at present be determined.
6 Cf. CIS, I, no. 86, and above, p. 301.
6	See W. F. Albright, Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible, New York, 1931, p. 87 £f.
7	In the famous Moabite Stone; cf., e.g., Lidzbarski, Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik, p. 415, and Sidersky, La Stele de Mesa.310
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
of Moab. Both Mesha and the Old Testament recognized that he bore the same relation to Moab that Yahweh bore to Israel. Of his nature we know only what his name reveals. So far as the present writer knows no one has ventured to penetrate the meaning of the word Chemosh by offering an etymology of it. Ashtar is, of course, the masculine Ashtart with whom we have become acquainted in South Arabia. As Chemosh was a deity who could be equated with Athtar, he must have been a god of fertility. More than this cannot at present be said. In a time of national stress Mesha sacrificed his son to him.1
It remains to study the gods of the other great branch of the western Semites, the Aramaeans. It has been pointed out in Chapter III that they first appear in history in the fourteenth century B.C., and that they were differentiated from the other Semitic peoples partly by their residence in the “sea lands” of Arabia and partly by the mingling of the northern section of them with the Hurri. Although their presence in the region which afterward bore their name can be traced thus early, we have no written material which throws light on their religion earlier than the eighth century before Christ.
In reviewing this material it will be convenient to begin with the inscriptions. The earliest of these is an inscription of Kilamu2 written in Phoenician and dating from the ninth century B.C. Kilamu mentions three deities, Baal-Semed, Baal-Khamman of another place the name of which is not clearly made out, and Rakeb-el, or ‘The messenger of El.’ The two baalim are clearly the well-known Canaanite and Semitic gods of fertility. Rakeb-el is a god with whom we have not hitherto met in our study of the Semitic pantheons. His name, however, presupposes the recognition of the Phoenician god El, who stood at the head of the Phoenician pantheon. Centuries later in the neighborhood of Tyre there was, as we have seen, a god Malak-Ashtart, ‘The messenger of Ashtart/ who, if we are not mistaken, was a form of Adonis.3 Could the Rakeb-el be another way of alluding to the same god? While it is possible, the
1Ci. 2 Kgs. 3:26, 27.
2	F. von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, iv, p. 374; Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, III, p. 218.
3	See above, pp. 289 and 292ff.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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analogies are not sufficiently close to be convincing. True, Ishtar’s descent to the lower world was called by the Akkadians ‘The Mission of Ishtar/1 but other conceptions of ‘mission’ also existed in the Semitic world. It is now generally recognized that the maVak Yahweh in the J document of the Old Testament was not a being separate from Yahweh, but Yahweh himself gone on a particular mission,2 and Rakeb-el may have originated in a parallel conception. In Kilamu’s inscription he is the patron deity of the house of Kilamu.
About a century later three inscriptions were written at Zendjirli by Panammu and Bar-Rekub, a father and son.3 The son records himself as a servant of Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria, who ruled from 745 to 727 B.C. These inscriptions are in Aramaic, showing that in the interval between Kilamu and the eighth century, Aramaeans had occupied the place. The pantheon mentioned by Panammu consisted of five deities: Hadad, El, Resheph, Rakeb-el and She-mesh. El and Rakeb-el were clearly taken over from the Phoenician pantheon of the pre-Aramaean inhabitants, as the inscription of Kilamu proves. Probably the same is true of Resheph, the fire-god, as we have previously found him in Phoenicia.4 Immigrants entering a new land always did honor to the principal gods who were believed to already control the place: such worship of the gods of their predecessors is, therefore, what we should expect.
At the head of Panammu’s pantheon stood the Aramaean god Hadad, the Aramaean equivalent of the Akkadian Adad, the weather-god of the Akkadians, who in Babylonia after 2200 B.C. took the place of Enlil as the thunderer.5 The name Hadad is derived from a Semitic root which means ‘to crash/ ‘make a loud noise/ in Hebrew hadad, and in Arabic hadda. It was an appropriate name for a weather-god. The position of Hadad at the head of Pan-ammu’s pantheon betrays, we believe, Hurri-Hittite influence. The Hurri and Hittites belonged to the same racial stock, and at
1	The month Elul was called arah sipri ismrdti, literally, The month of the mission of the goddesses;’ cf. KB, II, 252-253. It was the month when Ishtar was believed to have gone to the lower world for Tammuz.
2	See the writer’s Religion of Israel, p. 174 if.
3Lidzbarski, Handbuch, p. 440; G. A. Cooke, North Semitic Inscriptions, p. 159 ff.
4	See above, p. 295.
5	See above, ch. viii, p. 246.312
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one time a portion of the Hum had been under the sway of the Hittite empire. At the head of the Hittite pantheon stood the weather-god Teshub. Since in the architectural decorations of the palace of Panammu Hittite influence is manifest in almost every line, it seems but natural to see Hurri-Hittite influence in the elevation of Teshub to the first place in this pantheon.
Similarly the presence of Shamash in Panammu’s pantheon is due to Aramaean influence. As we have seen, the sun-god was not worshipped under this name by Amorites, Canaanites, and Phoenicians. In South Arabia Shams was a goddess. Whether the worship of the sun-deity had been brought by the Aramaeans from their Arabian home and its sex changed by changed conditions, or whether its worship among them had been due to long exposure to Babylonian influence, is an open question. The presence of this worship is, however, indisputable.
What should, perhaps, be regarded as a sixth deity, Araq-Resheph, is mentioned by Panammu. The name, if pure Aramaean, means ‘The land-Resheph/ or the Resheph belonging to the land.1 It seems probable that this is not a different god from the Resheph previously mentioned.
The inscription of Bar-Rekeb, like that of his father, gives Hadad the supreme place in the pantheon. It implies that the pantheon was of considerable size, but mentions by name no new deities. “Hadad, El, Rekeb-el, lord of the house, and Shamash, and all the gods of Yadi”2 is the phrase by which he refers to them. At this time, then, and at this place we find two new deities introduced by the Aramaeans.
An Aramaic inscription, also from the eighth century,3 that lay for some twenty years in the house of the sheik of the village of Sefire, twenty-five kilometers southeast of Aleppo, records a treaty in which a king of a place called Kethek (its radicals are HrD; we do not really know how it was vocalized) and a king of Arpad
1 Perhaps it was intended by the phrase to express the fact that Resheph was a native of the land of Yadi. It is tempting to connect ’araq with the ’araqa, ‘be wakeful/ and explain the name to mean ‘Resheph who never slumbers/ but the inscription is not Arabic.
2Lidzbarski, Handbuch, p. 442-443, 1. 22.
3 Ronzevalle, Mélanges de VUniversité St. Joseph, XV, fasc. 7, and H. Bauer, Archiv uer Orientforschung, VIII (1932), p. 1.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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(Arvad) participated. The inscription, which has but recently been published, not only reveals the existence of a hitherto unknown Aramaean kingdom, but also shows that the city of Arvad, the most northerly of the ancient Phoenician sisterhood of towns, had passed under the sway of the Aramaeans. The king of Arvad was at this time ‘Atar-samak, a name meaning ‘Atar is a support.’ ‘Atar is the form which the primitive Semitic mother-goddess assumes in Aramaic. The name proves what we should expect, that the primitive mother-goddess was known and revered, and also that the king of Arvad was an Aramaean. The treaty is attested by the invocation of many gods after the manner of the treaties of the Hittite kings with their vassals and, like the Hittite treaties, the list begins with Babylonian deities.1 However, there is a difference, for whereas the Hittite documents invoke the deities of the older Sumerian pantheon, the document before us invokes those of the later Babylonian pantheon, and goes so far in some cases as to modify the old syzigies. Thus we have Marduk and Zarpanit, Nabu and Tash-mit, Nergal and Lasa,2 Shamash and Nar,3 Sin and Nikal,4 Nakar and Kad’ah,5 the gods of the expanse and the land, the seven (spirits),6 El and ‘Elyon.7 They do not stop with the invocation of deities, but appeal for witness also to the heavens, the sea, to springs, to day and night. The surprising feature of this list is the absence of Hadad, Atar, and the deities that one associates particularly with the Aramaeans. This can partly be explained, it would seem, by the fact that the document belongs to a type of treaty which through Hittite influence had become conventionalized, and consequently does not reveal the religion of everyday life.
It is possible that Aramaic was employed as a lingua franca and that the monarch who was imposing his treaty on the Aramaic king of Arvad was not a Semite at all. Some of these deities were, however, naturalized in this region. At Nerab, a small village
1	See E. F. Weidner, Politische Dokumente aus Kleinasien, Leipzig, 1923, p. 49 ff.
2	Evidently employed here as a synonym of Ereshkigal.
3	Literally, ‘Fire/ The Babylonian consort of Shamash was Malkatu. See above, p. 245.
4	A corruption of the Sumerian Ningal.
6 This pair are unknown to me.
6	Perhaps the Babylonian Igigi.
7	These are, of course, good West Semitic gods.314
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southeast of Aleppo, two inscriptions1 perhaps of the seventh century were found, written by two priests of Sahr, the moon-god in Nerab. In addition to Sahr these priests invoked Shemesh and Nikal and Nasik or Noshek. The first three of these are already familiar; the fourth is of uncertain origin and character.
Passing southward into Syria proper, an inscription of Zaker,2 king of Hamath about 800 B.C., affords some information about the gods whom he worshipped. His inscription is on a monument erected to a deity	whose name has frequently been read
Alur. The late Professor Clay interpreted it as equivalent to (Al-’ur), regarding ’Ur as a corrupted spelling of Amurru,3 a view which has not met with favor. In the judgment of the writer the name should be read El-war. The first element is clearly the general Semitic word for god, but may, in this inscription as in Phoenicia, be a proper name of the chief deity of the pantheon. The element war is puzzling. Possibly it may be connected with the Arabic root WRY, which as a noun has among its meanings ‘fire-stick,’ or ‘fire-brand.’ If this be its meaning, El-war could be an epithet of Resheph. It is, perhaps, more probable that the god was El and that war is an epithet of his, the meaning of which we have not yet learned. The importance of this god is attested by the fact that Zaker built his temple, erected this monument, and coupled him with Baal-shamain, the god of heaven.
However important El-war may have been, Zaker attributed his success to the favor of Baal-shamain, the lord of heaven, who appears to have been worshipped in the highlands as well as on the Phoenician coast. This deity communicated his will to Zaker through seers and soothsayers. Shemesh, the sun-god, and Sahr, the moon-god, are mentioned and also “the gods of heaven and the gods of earth.” Though Zaker’s worship appears to have centered on the gods mentioned, his pantheon contained many other deities.
Zaker was a contemporary of Ben-hadad II of Damascus, whom he calls by his correct Aramaic name, Bar-Hadad. Our main source of information as to the religion of the Aramaeans, who appear to have settled in Damascus as early as 1000 B.C., is the Old Testament. Since two of its kings with whom the Israelites
1	Lidzbarski, Handbuch, p. 445; G. A. Cooke, North Semitic Inscriptions, p. 146, 149.
2	Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, III, 1.
3	See his Amurru, the Home of the Northern Semites, Phila., 1909, p. 158.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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fought bore the name Ben-hadad1 (Bar-Hadad), we infer that the worship of the Aramaean weather-god Hadad, was popular there. This is confirmed by another passage which makes it clear that at this period there was a temple of Hadad in Damascus, though the passage in question calls him Rimmon,2 a corruption of the Assyrian name of the weather-god, Ramman. Ramman, from the stem ramdnu, To thunder/ has the same meaning as Hadad. Doubtless other deities were also worshipped at Damascus, but at present we have no information concerning them.
In the seventh century before Christ the Nabathaeans were dwelling in Northern Arabia. They spoke the Aramaic tongue, but otherwise it is hard to distinguish them from the Arabs. Later they conquered Edom and established a kingdom which at times not only penetrated Arabia, occupying oases as far as El-Hegra and Teima, but much of trans-Jordanian Palestine as well. When Ashurbanipal fought with them in the seventh century B.C., they were worshipping the mother-goddess whom they called Atar3—the Aramaean form of Athtar, Ishtar, and Ashtart.
Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipaks father, and apparently Sennacherib, his grandfather, had also found her worship at Adummu or Adum-matu, which was perhaps Duma in the Jauf.4 Esarhaddon says5 that he restored to the king of this place the idols of the following deities which Sennacherib had taken to Assyria, viz.: Atarsamain, Dai, Nakhai, Ruldaiu, Abirillu, and Atarquruma. Atarsamain is Atar of the heavens and Atarquruma is Atar Qarnaim, or the horned Atar.6 The form of these names proves that the people who worshipped them spoke Aramaic. The other names are clearly epithets which have become separate divinities.7
11 Kgs. 15:18; 2 Kgs. 6:24; 13:3; Jer. 49:27.
2	See 2 Kgs. 5:18.
3	KB. II, 221 (Rassam Cylinder, col. viii, 1. 112). Ashurbanipal heard her name as Atarsamain, ‘Atar of the heavens.’
4	Cf. Ebeling in Reallexikon der Assyriologie, p. 39 f.
5	See R. Campbell Thompson, The Prisms of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal found at Nineveh in 1927-8, London, 1931, col. iv, 1-14.
6	Cf. Ashtoreth-k(q)arnaim of Gen. 14:5.
7	Dai is, perhaps, the Aramaic equivalent of the Arabic Dhu- ‘owner,’ ‘possessor’ which appears in such divine names as Dhu-’l-Shara. If so, the Assyrian scribe did not record the full epithet. Nakhai would mean ‘The restgiver’; Ruldaiu would be the Assyrian form of rovs-dai, ‘The chief possessor of (something)’ the object possessed again being omitted. Abirillu is an Assyrianization of Abir-el, ‘The mighty god.’316
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The Nabathaeans who lived in Teima worshipped §alm, Shingala, and Ashira.1 §alm, ‘The bold5 or ‘brave* one, clearly is a name that was at first an epithet. It doubtless conceals a god whom we should recognize, if we had his original name. Shingala, ‘He who gives progeny/ is one of the Arabic deities of fertility. Ashira is the Asherat of Phoenicia and the Athirat of South Arabia. This pantheon, like the pantheons of Main, Saba, the Qatabanians, and Ak-sum, consisted of three principal divinities, the third member of the triad being a goddess.2 If we had more information, probably one of the male deities would turn out to have been originally an Athtar. Doubtless other deities were known and reverenced at Teima, but this triad held the chief place.
At El-Hegra, Dushara, Manuthu, and Qaisha appear to have formed a similar triad,3 though in one inscription four gods are named:4 Dushara, Allat, Manuthu, and Qaisha. Dushara is the Dhu-l-Shara of Arabia, which designated some god (perhaps Athtar) as the owner of Shara. Manuthu is the goddess Manat of the Coran. Qaisha is the god Qais whose name forms a part of the name of the poet Imru-’l-Qais, and who was worshipped down to the time of Mohammed. Allat is, of course, the Arabian mother-goddess with whom we have become acquainted in a previous chapter.5 Hubalu, the god Hobal whom we also have met6 in the Meccan pantheon, is also mentioned. A deity Rabel (a name meaning ‘great god*) is also mentioned. This pantheon appears to have consisted of a purely Arabian group of gods. Of these Dushara is mentioned more often than any other deity;7 next in frequency, Manuthu.8
At Petra a god Wathra is mentioned, about whom we know nothing more;9 at Damascus, a god Melek10—an epithet meaning ‘king/
1	Cf. CIS, II, 113.
2	See above, Ch. VII.
3	Cf. CIS, II, 197.
4	Ibid., p. 198.
5	Ch. VII.
6	CIS, II, 198, and above, ch. VII.
7	Cf. CIS, II, 199, 206, 208, 209 and 350.
8	Ibid., no. 206.
9	Cf. CIS, II, 354.
10	Cf. CIS, II, 161.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
317
which conceals his real name; and at Imtan near Bosra, a god 'Ara.1 Not enough is known of any of these to identify his origin. Inscriptions from the same region attest the worship of the goddess Allat at various points in the Hauran.2 Indeed patristic and other references to the worship of the mother-goddess at various points in the Nabathaean and north Arabian territory lead us to believe that her worship, perhaps under various names, was perpetuated until the fierce fanaticism of Mohammed swept it away. Herodotus,3 Ephraem4 the Syrian, Epiphanius,5 St. Jerome,6 and Isaac of Antioch,7 bear witness to her worship, to the identification of her with the planet Venus, to her boisterous and impure festivals, at which sexual orgies took place. Epiphanius identifies Dushara with Adonis-Eshmun-Tammuz.
The great oasis of Palmyra was for centuries a center of Nabathaean life. Beginning with the second century of our era we have inscriptional material from this place. From the inscriptions we learn that Baalshamain was worshipped.8 In one inscription Shamash, Allat, and Rahman appear as a triad and are called The good gods/9 Like the other Arabian triads, this one includes a goddess. Shamash, the sun-god, and Allat, the mother-goddess, are already well known to us. Rahman is an epithet, meaning ‘The merciful one/ It is interesting to find* it here, since Mohammed centuries afterward applied it so often to Allah. What deity does it designate? Possibly it is Ashtar. This is, of course, not certain, but is suggested by the fact that Ashtar appears in another Palmyrene inscription as the name of a man10—a name that is evidently a hypocoristicon.
In the preceding paragraphs we have gathered material from scattered inscriptions. Some added knowledge of the religion of the
1	Dussaud et Macler, Voyage archéologique, Paris, 1901, no. 36.
2	CIS, II, nos. 170, 182, 183 and 185.
3	Herodotus, III, 8
4	Ephraem Syrus, Opera, vol. II, p. 457 E, 458, 1. 1, 459 C.
5	Epiphanius, Panarion, LI.
6	Jerome, Vita Hilarionis, C. 25.
7	Isaac of Antioch, in Bickell’s edition, p. 244, 1. 449 sq.
8	Euting, Nabatäische Inschriften, 1886, no. 4, and Vogüé, La Syria Central, no. 73.
9	Vogüé, op. cit.} no. 8.
10	Vogüé, op. cit., no. 4.318
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
ancient Aramaeans may be gathered from two great Syrian shrines at Mabug (Hierapolis) and Baalbek (Heliopolis). Fortunately for the first of these we have the description of Lucian,1 from whom we learn that it was rebuilt by Stratonica, the wife of Seleucus I whom he divorced so that she could marry his son Antiochus I.2 The temple that she thus called into existence was still standing when Lucian wrote, and he describes its form, its priesthood, and its festivals. Lucian’s descriptions enable us to discern that the general features of the cult were those of the Semitic mother-goddess. From inscribed votive offerings that have come from this region and from representations of the deities in stone and terra cotta,3 we learn that two deities were worshipped here, Hadad and Atargatis. In epigraphic material the name of the goddess is spelled Atar'atu4 or Atar'atah.6 The name is a compound of which the first element is clearly that of the Aramaean goddess Atar. Several theories have been advanced to explain the second half of the name, but the most probable is that advanced by the late Eduard Meyer as long ago as 1897,6 who suggested that *Atah is a feminine form of the Phrygian god Attis, the vegetation-god. The flood of light that has been shed in recent years on the history of the upper Euphrates valley by the inscriptions from Boghaz Koi enables us to understand how Semites and Hurrians were fused in the Aramaean race, and also how closely the Hurrians were related racially to the peoples of Anatolia. Ataratah, corrupted by Greek writers to Atargatis, was a fusion of a deity of each of the two races that had fused in the Syrian melting pot. The same was true of Hadad. The Hadad of Hierapolis was undoubtedly a combination of the Semitic Adad and the Hittite-Hurrian Teshub, though in his case the Semitic name of the deity alone survived. The importance of this cult in the third century B.C. is shown by the fact that Stratonica selected it as the object of her royal patronage. It must then have been sacred with a hoary antiquity and have long been the goal of
1	De Syria Dea, §§10-60.
2	See Lucian, De Syria Dea, §§17, 18; E. Bevan, The House of Seleucus, I, pp. 62-65.
3	For some of these see “A propos d’Atargatis” by Paul Perdizet, in Syria, XII (1931), 267-273.
4	See ZDMG, VI, 472 ff.
5	Vogiie, Syrie Central, no. 3.
6	Realencylopadie fur protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 2. Auf., II, 171ff, 175.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
319
many pilgrims from the surrounding country. Her patronage and the consequent endowments helped to perpetuate the prestige of the shrine until the region was Christianized. Such was the fame of the temple and of its goddess that her worship spread to Palmyra and other points and, as already noted, Diodorus Siculus and Ovid identified the Ashtart of Ashkelon with her.
According to Lucian the temple stood on a hill in the midst of Hierapolis. It faced the south and had a forecourt some 600 feet in length. In it stood two phalloi or masseboth which, according to Lucian, were some 600 feet high1—a statement which is doubtless an exaggeration. It was decorated with much gold. In the naos was a holy of holies into which only the priests entered. In it was a statue of Zeus (Hadad) and Juno (Atar-atah2). In the naos on the left side was a throne for the sun (Shamash), but no image of him.3 Near this throne was an image of Apollo (Resheph).4 Beside Apollo were a triad whom he calls Atlas (Ashtar?), Hermes (Adonis), and Lucina (Atar) .5 Outside the temple in the court were images which Lucian took for human beings,6 and some of them, at least, were such—Alexander the Great, and Stratonica. Perhaps they all were once human. Some of them represent Homeric heroes. Their presence here was doubtless due to the Hellenic origin of Stratonica and her advisers.
The images of the deities in the naos tell a story of gradual development. Hadad and Atargatis were at this period worshipped in the holy of holies as the principal divinities. The images of Ashtar (?), Adonis, and Atar point to an earlier cult in which a triad of gods were revered as in Phoenicia, South Arabia, and Abyssinia. Apollo is the Semitic Resheph in Greek dress. His preeminence over the more popular triad, as indicated by his position in the temple, is doubtless due to the fact that he was regularly identified with Apollo, a god so popular among the Hellenes that he particularly appealed to Stratonica and her coadjutors.
1	De Syria Deai §28.
2	§31.
3	§34.
4	§35.
5	§38.
6	§40.320
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The temple was the home of flocks of doves1 which were considered sacred. Near it was a sacred lake containing sacred fishes of all sorts and sizes.2 An enclosure hard by contained sacred cattle, horses, bears, and lions.3
Baalbek was not so fortunate as to find a Lucian to describe it, but it had the good fortune to receive the patronage of the Anton-ines, and the ruins of the splendid structures they reared bear to this day mute witness to its popularity.4 The name Baalbek (baal-beq a), ‘Lord of the valley/5 takes us back to the shrine of an Aramaean Baal whose worship at this site is doubtless coeval with the coming of the Aramaeans. Indeed it is probable that before the coming of the Aramaeans the Amorites had worshipped here an earth-god of agriculture. In the period of the Antonines and later this god was identified with Jupiter and was known as Jupiter Optimus Maximus Heliopolitanus. That the earth-god, who was ‘Lord of the valley* between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains, could be identified with Jupiter is evidence that he had become a celestial deity before the Roman times, having been identified either with Baal-shamain or Shemesh, the sun-god, or with both. The fact that the Greeks called his city Heliopolis argues, perhaps, rather for Shemesh than for Baal-shamain. Under the imperial patronage the god who had begun as lord of the valley and had later become lord of the sky continued to exert his influence and attract his worshippers down to the time of Constantine.
In the West Semitic world as elsewhere the worship of the gods at certain seasons culminated in great festivals. To one of these, the great spring festival of Phoenicia, our attention has already been called. The poems from Ras Shamra reveal to us how the tree-god Alein was mourned, and discloses some of the ritual by which his resurrection was implored.6 Lucian vividly describes in an oft-
1	§54.
2	§45.
3	§40.
4	See Baalbek, edited by Theo. Wiegand; the description of the ancient cult and temple is to be found chiefly in Vol. II (written by Krencker, von Liipke, and Winnefeld), under Ch. III. Berlin, 1923.
5	O. Puchstein, Führer durch die Ruinen von Baalbek, Berlin, 1905.
6	Cf. JAOS, LII, 221-231, and the writer’s Archeology and the Bible, 6th ed., 1932, p. 533 f.WEST SEMITIC RELIGIOUS ORIGINS
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quoted passage the wailing for Adonis which preceded this festival at Gebal (Byblos) together with the rejoicings in which it culminated. He also described the sacrifices of hair or virginity by which it was accompanied.1 The same writer mentions at least three festivals which were kept at Hierapolis (Mabug). One of these was connected with the ceremony of taking the images of the gods in the temple to the sacred lake, which was in the temple enclosure, to bathe.2 A second, he says, was kept by those who were going on a sea voyage;3 of this he gives no details. The greatest of their festivals was, he says, celebrated at the beginning of summer.4 Some called it the fire and others the torch festival. A part of the celebration consisted of cutting great trees and placing them in the court. They then brought goats and sheep and other animals, as well as birds, and hung them alive on the trees, together with garments and objects of silver and gold, and marching in procession with their idols about the trees they burned them. During the festival consecrated men performed their orgies, and youths wrestled and boxed. One significant rite consisted in selecting a youth who stripped himself, castrated himself with an ancient sword and, running through the town bearing the dissevered parts in his hand, threw them into a house. From this house he received female apparel which, apparently, he afterward wore. This is a non-Semitic feature, but a feature well known in the worship of the mother-goddess of Asia Minor. Its presence here confirms the validity of the view that there were Hurrian elements in the cult.
^Elian bears witness to the annual occurrence of this festival to the mother-goddess in Sicily.5 Its celebration at Eryx was associated with the going and return of the doves to Africa, the dove being sacred to Ashtart. St. Augustine6 is authority for the existence of a similar festival in honor of the goddess Tanith in North Africa. On the great festal day the goddess was borne in a litter, and plays which Christians regarded as obscene were enacted before her. Dances were enacted by those who were rapt with fury and cere-
1	De Syria Dea, §6.
2	Ibid., §47.
3	Ibid., §48.
*Ibid., §§49-57.
5	De Natura Animalium, IV, 2.
6	De Civiatte Dei, II, 4.322
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monies were enacted which had doubtless originated in those earlier days when it was thought that by sympathetic magic the gods could be induced to bestow on the earth and on animate life the blessings of fertility.
We can thus trace here and there in the West Semitic area this central feast. Its local features differed in different localities in accordance with local conditions and traditions; but its central purpose was everywhere the same. Here and there we obtain glimpses of other festivals. Thus at Kition in Cyprus we learn that the feast of the new moon1 was kept every month as it was in Palestine.2 Had. we more complete information doubtless we could trace other festivals, but we can see enough in the little we have, both of the deities and the festivals, to reveal to us everywhere the influences of a cult that was born in the Semitic cradle-land, modified indeed in different localities by local or foreign influences or by both, yet through all still discernible and exerting a formative power.
1	CIS, I, 86.
2	See, e.g., 1 Sam. 20:5 ff., 2 Kgs. 4:23.X
YAHWEH
THE highly composite nature of the Hebrew people has been traced above in Chapter III. During the progress of our study it has also been frequently demonstrated or made highly probable that, when different elements entered into the composition of one of these ancient peoples, the religion of the resultant nation in subsequent generations exhibited a fusion of elements derived from the various strains that had contributed to national life. It would be strange indeed if this law had not operated in shaping the religion of ancient Israel. That it did operate there can, it seems, be no question, but it is not so easy to trace its influence because a monotheism almost unique in the ancient world was developed by the Hebrew prophets, in consequence of which such early deities as were remembered were identified with Yahweh and came to be regarded as Yahweh under a different name, and the traditions concerning the patriarchal origins and the patriarchal times were retold in such a way as to make it appear that they, too, were monotheists. There are, nevertheless, left in the biblical narratives themselves many evidences of the earlier conditions of the religion, and, when these are combined with the information which archaeological research has brought to light, the real historical outline can be restored with a great deal of confidence.
In this field the pioneer work of such scholars as Wellhausen, Kuenen, W. R. Smith, and Stade is well known, and, in spite of the criticisms of lesser scholars, in its main outline still stands. That here and there it should be possible, as knowledge increases, to correct details is what we should expect and in no way detracts from the fundamental correctness of the sketch of the development which they set forth. One of the best of recent brief restatements of the results of their study, together with the more modern additions to knowledge is that of Georg Beer, Welches war die älteste Religion IsraelsP1 Beer has pointed out, as had been frequently done before
1 Giessen, 1927.
323324
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
by others, that the early religion of Israel was polytheistic and polydaemonistic—a thesis that there is abundant evidence in the Old Testament to prove. To deny it is to shut one’s eyes to a part of the evidence.
In the documents which are woven into the earlier books of the Old Testament, two theories of the early religion of the nation are set forth. According to the J document written in the tribe of Judah about 850 B.C., the worship of Yahweh was primeval; it began in the time of Enosh, grandson of Adam. According to this theory the patriarchs as a matter of course worshipped Yahweh. According to the E document written in Ephraim, the god of the patriarchs was El or Elohim, and the worship of him under the name Yahweh was not known until it was introduced by Moses at the time of the Exodus. In this view of the history of the religion E is followed by the post-exilic document P. It is now generally conceded that in this matter E and P reflect the real history, and that the view reflected by J is to be accounted for by the fact that the Kenites, who had worshipped Yahweh from time immemorial, had been absorbed by the highly composite tribe of Judah. We may take it as established, therefore, that, until the time of Moses, Yahweh was either unknown or held but a very subordinate place in the religion of the Hebrew people. We turn, then, to the patriarchal stories for information as to what gods were worshipped.
The writer has pointed out elsewhere that the narratives concerning Abraham, when tested by such knowledge as archaeology supplies, appear to reflect conditions in Palestine 1800-1400 B.C.1 before the coming of the Aramaeans. In other words they reveal something of the Amorite-Canaanite period or stratum of Israel’s ancestry and religion. Whether the Abraham portrayed in them was a historical character, or whether he was only the ideal hero of the saga, is immaterial. The name Abraham was known, though borne by quite a different man,2 but as yet the historicity of the Biblical Abraham cannot be established. Even though Abraham be as shadowy a figure as ^Eneas in Vergil’s great poem, the cultural features of the stories are indisputable.
Abraham and his family are represented several times as wor-
1	History of the Hebrew People, N. Y., 1930, ch. Ill,
2	See the writer’s Archaeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 352 f.YAHWEH
325
shipping El1—a god which we have already traced as a Canaanite-Phcenician and Amorite deity. Alt, recognizing this, enters upon an elaborate argument to show that Abraham is a historical character and that this is the God he brought with him into the country.2 3 He collects instances to show that to refer to a god as the god of such and and such a man was a general Semitic custom, and then argues that, because some of the instances which he has cited were instances in which the man so mentioned was a historical character, all such references must involve only historical persons. Hence, he concludes, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were real historical characters. The argument is, however, fallacious. If the principle underlying it were sound, there could be no unhistorical sagas except fables. Poets, however, and writers of fiction in every age apply to their characters the expressions applied in real life to actual men. Only so can they lend verisimilitude to their story. Moreover Shedrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel, ch. 3, who are found in Alt’s list, can scarcely be claimed as historical figures. On the other hand, when we recall that only Amorites worshipped, so far as we know, a god El, we can scarcely doubt the source from which his name came into the Hebrew traditions.8
A study of the facts also furnishes proof that Elohim, which, according to the E document, was the favorite designation of God down to the time of Moses, was also a Canaanite usage. El and Elah (.Eloah) are synonyms both in Phoenician and Hebrew; their plurals, Elim and Elohim were accordingly synonyms. In the El-Amarna texts an Amorite and his neighbors, who were writing in Akkadian, employ ilani as a singular4 * in a way which shows that they were accustomed in their own tongue to use Elim or Elohim as singular. The same usage can be traced in Phoenician inscrip-
1	See Gen. 14:18 if; 16:13; 17:1 and 5:21; 33; 35:7 (cf. 31:13); and Jud. 9:46. Cf. also ch. IX, p. 308 above.
2	See Albrecht Alt, Der Gott der Väter, Stuttgart, 1929, pp. 31-73.
3	R. P. Dougherty’s argument that, because El was a deity in the Arabian sealand which was not far from Ur, and that therefore the Hebrew conception of God was brought from the sealand by Abraham, seems to the writer to seek the wrong channel for the transmission of El to the west. See R. P. Dougherty, The Sealand of Ancient Arabia, 174 ff.
4	See e.g., Winckler und Abel, Thontajeinfund von El-Amarna, nos. 100, 2; 122, 1;
23, 1; 126, 2; 190, 2; etc.326
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
tions of later time. We find elim Ashtart/ The goddess Ashtart; ’elim Nergal,2 The god Nergal;5 and even as an individual god, dim bdal Sidon,3 ‘Elim, lord of Sidon.’ The E document affords evidence that this usage prevailed in northern Israel down to the eighth century, and the P document passed it on to later Judaism. It is now clear, however, that the Amorite Canaanites were worshipping Elim or Elohim in the period covered by the Abrahamic narratives, and there is no other known source from which this same worship in the same country could be derived.
In the Abrahamic period, too, the Amorites who were occupying the territory occupied later by the tribe of Asher, whose descendants later constituted the tribe of Asher, were worshipping the goddess Asherat,4 one of the earliest of Semitic mother-goddesses, later called Ashera. It has been shown in previous chapters that the worship of this goddess was of the same character as the worship of Ashtart— the two names being at times interchangeable. From the historical and prophetic books of the Old Testament we learn that this worship was perpetuated and participated in by Israelites until the reformation of Josiah in 621 B.C. From the nature of our Old Testament sources, which advocate Yahweh monolatry when they do not go further and teach monotheism, Abraham is not represented as participating in it, but it is almost certain that no Semite of the Abrahamic period would ignore this important divinity.
As already pointed out in the preceding chapter, Addu (Adad, Hadad) was worshipped by Amorites before the time of the El-Amarna letters.5 His cult, accordingly, formed a part of the religion of the Abrahamic age.
It is possible that Yahweh was known in Palestine as one of the minor gods in the Abrahamic period. On a tablet found at Taanach the name Akhi-yami occurs. This would be the form which the name Akhi-Yawi,6 ‘My brother is Yahwi,’ would take in Akkadian. As it will appear at a later point that the name Yahweh could be
1	In an inscription of about the 2nd century B.C., cf. e.g., Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, I, p. 157.
2	CIS, I, 119.
3	Cf. Lidzbarski. Handbuch, p. 425, no. 4.
4	See above, ch. Ill, p. 88.
5	See above, ch. IX, p. 285.
6	Cf. Sellin, Tell Ta'anek, p. 115, no. 2.2, and p. 121, no. 2.2.YAHWEH
327
spelled in various ways, it is probable that it actually forms a part of this ancient name in Tanaach. Evidence will be presented below to show that the name Yahweh was an epithet. This name makes it probable that the epithet was known and employed in the Abra-hamic period, but, if so, the deity to whom it was applied was regarded as one of the minor deities of the land.
The narratives concerning Jacob present in saga form the Hebrew recollections of the coming of the Aramaeans and of their alliances with some of the tribes who were in the land before them. It is now recognized by many scholars that the El-Amarna letters afford contemporary evidence of their struggles to gain a foothold in the land, calling them Habiri. There is, however, little information in the Jacob narratives about new gods. We are told that Rachel stole her father’s teraphim—household idols—and carried them to Palestine with her (Gen. 31:34) and these teraphim are called gods (’elohim, Gen. 31:30, 32). Such household idols continued to be cherished at least until the time of David (1 Sam. 19:13), but almost nothing is known of their cult.
Probably it was at this time that the Bne Israel formed an alliance with the tribe of Gad.1 This tribe appears to have worshipped a deity Gad. At least, at a much later time, we find a deity Gad worshipped as a god of good luck or fortune,2 and it is at least plausible to connect his origin with the tribe which bore the same name. Whether the Bne Israel (the Leah tribes) found the tribe of Gad in the land as a part of the Amorite settlement, of which the kingdom of Heshbon was a part,3 or whether Gad was a remotely kindred Aramaean tribe that had also come from the east, we do not know. In the former case Gad would be an Amorite deity; in the latter, an Aramaean.
Another deity which, centuries later, idolatrous Jews worshipped along with Gad, was Meni.4 As we find the Nabathaeans later worshipping a goddess Manuthu,5 there is some basis for supposing that Meni was a goddess brought by the Aramaeans and worshipped along with Gad.
1	See above, ch. Ill, p. 88.
2	Isa. 65:11. Olmstead, History of Palestine and Syria, 211, also takes Gad as the god of this tribe.
3	See Nu. 21.
4	Isa. 65:11.
5	See above, ch. IX, p. 316.328
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
The worship of one other god, Shemesh, appears to have been brought by the Aramaeans to Palestine. The El-Amarna letters call a place Beth-Ninurta, and in one of these documents we are told that it had surrendered to the Habiri invaders.1 When,next we hear of it through biblical sources it is called Beth-shemesh (Jud. 1:33). As Aramaeans worshipped Shemesh and the Amorite-Canaanites did not, at least under that name, it would seem that the Habiri brought his worship to this shrine. Such are the glimpses which we obtain of the pre-Mosaic religion of the component elements of the Hebrew people.2
A new element was introduced into the religious life of Israel by the work of Moses. This was nothing less than the worship of Yahweh as a god so jealous of his prerogatives that he demanded that no other deity be worshipped in his presence. This event was epoch-making. It set in motion influences which, in the long centuries which followed, called into existence three of the four monotheistic religions of the world. There have been those who doubted the historical character of Moses, but, to the present writer, doubt on this point seems unjustified. Great positive religions do not come into existence except through the religious experience and work of great personalities. Back of Buddhism stands the personality of Gautama; back of Jainism, that of Vardhamana: back of Taoism, that of Lao-tse; back of Confucianism, Confucius; back of Zoroastrianism, Zoroaster; back of Islam, Mohammed; back of Christianity, Jesus; and it is as unthinkable that Judaism should have sprung up without Moses as that one of the systems mentioned should have been born without its founder. No one acquainted with the assured results of biblical criticism will deny that the work of Moses as depicted in the Pentateuch is overlaid with many traditions of later date until the task of delimiting his actual work is difficult and, perhaps, in all of its details, impossible. His personality, however, and the real nature of his religious experience, and
1	See Winckler und Abel, op. cit., no. 106.
2	In this outline we have traced no Hittite or Hurrian elements as ex hypothesi there should be. In the name of Abdi-Hepa, king of Jerusalem in the El-Amarna letters, we have indeed the Hittite-Hurrian goddess Hepa. As the Habiri after their settlement in Palestine adopted the language of the Amorite-Canaanites, such a goddess would be equated with Ashtart and called by the Semitic name. Probably it is for such reasons that the Hittite-Hurrian elements have been obliterated.YAHWEH
329
the main outline of his work can, in spite of all difficulties, be discerned in rugged outline.
The work of Moses consisted of two parts: the deliverance of Hebrews from Egypt and the establishment of the covenant between these Hebrews and Yahweh whereby Yahweh became their God and they agreed to worship him alone. In connection with this work a number of important questions arise, as follows: 1. Did Moses lead from Egypt all the Hebrews of his time or only a portion of them? 2. When did he do this? In the fifteenth century B.C., or the thirteenth century B.C.? 3. Whence did Moses derive his knowledge of Yahweh? 4. What led Moses to undertake this mission? 5. What was the nature of the deity to whose worship Hebrews then bound themselves? 6. What was the nature of the covenant between Yahweh and the Hebrews in the time of Moses? 7. What were the implements of the cult in the time of Moses? 8. What was the history and nature of the Yahweh cult before the time of Moses? To each of these questions some study must be given. They will be discussed in the order stated.
1. It is well known to scholars that both the biblical and archaeological data concerning the exodous of Israel from Egypt are conflicting. According to Ex. 1:11 it was Ramses II, 1292-1225, who oppressed the Hebrews, but, according to the El-Amarna letters the Habiri, whom we have admitted to have been Hebrews, were conquering Palestine in the previous century. If Ramses II was the pharaoh of the oppression, Merneptah must have been the pharaoh of the exodus, but a stele of Merneptah boasts that he had destroyed Israel in Palestine.1 The book of Joshua records the invasion of Palestine by the Hebrews from the east, but Nu. 21 and Jud. 1 record its invasion from the south. Such facts as these have led to a difference of opinion as to the date of the exodus. Archbishop Ussher dated it in 1491 B.C. After the establishment of a fairly reliable Egyptian chronology, many scholars dated it, on the basis of the Egyptian reference in Ex. 1:11, about 1220 B.C.2 Since the discovery of the El-Amarna letters and the identification
1	Cf. Breasted’s Ancient Records, Egypt, III, 264 £f., or the writer’s Archeology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 375.
2	This is the view of the Egyptologists, and, until recently, of the majority of biblical scholars.330
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of the Habiri as Hebrews, scholars such as J. W. Jack1 have dated it about 1400 B.C. Paton,2 because of the conflicting nature of the evidence, both scriptural and archaeological, reached the conclusion that there were two periods when Hebrews entered Palestine and gained a foothold there, one in the reign of Amenophis IV, 1375— 1350 B.C., when the Habiri, the Bne Israel, entered the land and settled in it; and another about 1200 B.C., when the Rachel tribes, who alone had been in Egypt and had been delivered by Moses, pushed their way into the country. The former, he thought, entered from the south, the latter, from the east; the conquest of the former is recorded in Nu. 21 and Judges 1; that of the latter, in the book of Joshua. In two previous works the writer has accepted and advocated the view of a dual Hebrew settlement in Palestine,3 and he still believes, in spite of certain difficulties, that that is the only satisfactory explanation of the conflicting evidence. The archaeological researches of Garstang carried on in recent years at Jericho, Ai, and other sites, leads him to believe that Jericho was burned and Ai and similar sites destroyed about 1400 B.C.4 This evidence tends to show that the Habiri, and not the Rachel tribes, destroyed these towns as the present writer formerly thought. Olmstead, who accepts the identification of the Habiri and Hebrews, and who finds Benjamin and Joshua mentioned in one of the El-Amarna letters,5 supposes that only the tribe of Levi6 was in Egypt and that it was the Levites whom Moses led out of that land of bondage. Olmstead thus accepts the theory of two settlements, and apparently would date the work of Moses about 1225-1200 B.C.7 This theory is not without its difficulties, for, as Budde long ago pointed out,8 it is not at all certain that the Levites, who were priests, had anything to do with the tribe of Levi. Moreover the
1	See his Date of the Exodus, 1925. So also Gustav Hölscher, Geschichte der israelitische Religion, 1922, p. 59.
2	Cf. Biblical World, XLVI, 82-88 and 173-180, and JBL, XXXII, 1-53.
3	The Religion of Israel, ch. Ill, and History of the Hebrew People, ch. IV-VII.
4	See his Foundations of the Biblical Traditions, New York, 1931, passim.
5	History of Palestine and Syria, 1931, p. 197 ff.
6	Ibid., p. 247.
7	Chronology used to be thought “the backbone of history,” but Olmstead’s History of Palestine and Syria contains no discussion of chronology, and the word does not occur in the index! No attempt is made to date many of the important events.
8	Religion of Israel to the Exile, New York, 1899, p. 80 ff.YAHWEH
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Ephraimitish tradition, that the worship of Yahweh was definitely introduced by Moses as something new, is a powerful argument in favor of the theory that it was the Rachel tribes, or a sib that was afterward incorporated in them, that were in Egypt and were led out by Moses. That might be the historical fact and, in the lapse of centuries, historical names, like Benjamin and Joshua, which had originally belonged to Leah tribes and who had previously inhabited the “hill country of Ephraim” before them,1 may have been taken over as their own and woven into the epic saga in the places in which the documents now portray them and with the functions there ascribed to them. For these reasons the writer is still inclined to believe that it was the Rachel tribes who suffered Egyptian bondage and were delivered by Moses, though he is frank to admit that his theory is no more capable of proof than that of Olm-stead. Whether it was the Rachel tribes or Levi that experienced the exodus, the number of people involved was comparatively small. Sixty-six souls went down to Egypt,2 the traditions remember, and two midwives could care for all their confinement cases.3 It was, then, a small company that Moses led from bondage, and it was, we believe, a part or all of the Rachel tribes.
2.	Our second question as to the date of the work of Moses has been already answered in the course of the previous discussion. It fell near the end of the thirteenth century B.C.
3.	As long ago as 1862 it was suggested by Ghillany4 that Yahweh was the god of the Midianite-Kenites, and that it was from their priest of Yahweh, whose daughter Moses married, that Moses learned to worship him. This view was supported by Tiele,5 strongly urged by Stade,6 more fully worked out by Budde,7 and
1	There is no real proof that they occupied the hill country of Ephraim in the El-Am-arna period. The letter in question places them in Pella. Indeed there is reason to believe that they did not win the hill country; see the writer’s History of the Hebrew People, pp. 38 and 70.
2	Gen. 46:26.
3	Ex. 1:15.
4	Theologische Briefe an die Gebildeten der deutschen Nation, I, 216, 408.
5	Vergelijkende Geschiednis van de Egyptische en Mesopotamische Godsdiensten, p. 559.
6 Geschichte des Volkes Israel, I, 130 f.; Biblische Theologie, pp. 42 f.
7	Religion of Israel to the Exile, ch. I.332
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accepted by Guthe,1 H. P. Smith,2 Wildeboer,3 Cheyne,4 Paton,5 Burney,6 Gressmann,7 G. Beer,8 and others. The writer has expressed his acceptance of the theory in no less than five publications.9 Other theories have been urged. Friedrich Delitzsch10 urged that Yahweh’s name was originally Yah, and that it was borrowed from the Babylonian Ea. Hommel,11 Winckler,12 Zim-mern,13 and Nielsen14 have believed that Yahweh was a moon-god. Gunkel15 and Eduard Meyer16 found reasons for believing that Yahweh was a volcano-god. Ward17 believed that Yahweh was a storm-god—simply Hadad under another epithet, while Haupt18 advocated the theory that Yahweh was borrowed from Edom and that his name was but a translation of that of a god Esau. The writer has fully discussed these theories elsewhere19 and it is unnecessary to repeat that discussion here. The Ea theory, the moon-god theory, and the Esau theories fall of their own weight. There is truth in the theory that Yahweh controlled rain and storms, but there is no evidence that he was ever a Hadad. It is doubtless true, too, that Yahweh was believed to be the god of a volcanic mountain—a consuming fire20—but this function was incidental to the
1	Geschichte des Volkes Israel, pp. 21, 29.
2	Old Testament History, p. 57.
3	Jahvedienst en Volksrelegie in Israel, pp. 15 ff.
4	Encyclopaedia Bíblica, col. 3208.
5	Biblical World, XXVIII, 116 f.
6	Journal of Theological Studies, IX, 337 f.
7	Mose und seine Zeit, pp. 37, 49, 434 f., 443, 447 ff., 469.
8	Welches war die älteste Religion Israels? p. 16.
9	Semitic Origins, 272 f., 275 f.; Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible in One Volume, p. 410; Studies in the History of Religion presented to Crawford Howell Toy, 1912, pp. 187-204; The Religion of Israel, ch. IV; and History of the Hebrew People, ch. VI.
10	See his Babel and Bible, translated by Johns, pp. 70 ff.
11	Aufsätze und Abhndlungen, pp. 159, 160.
12	Geschichte Israels, passim.
13	Keilinschriften und das alte Testament, pp. 364 ff. (3rd ed.).
14	Die altarabische Mondreligion und die mosaische Ueberlieferung, Strassburg, 1904.
15	“Genesis,” p. 195, in Nowack’s Handkommentar; Ausgewählte Psalmen, pp. 80 ff., 117, 180 ff.
16	Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme, Halle, 1906, pp. 69 ff.
17	AJSL, XXV, 175-187.
18	In OLZ, XII, 211-214.
19	In the volume presented to Professor Toy already referred to.
20	Cf. Heb. 12:29.YAHWEH
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habitat of the Midianites and not fundamental to the nature of Yahweh. No origin for Yahweh has ever been proposed that has in its favor a tithe of the reasons in its support that the Midianite-Kenite theory has. It is the writer’s conviction, therefore, that the answer to our third question is: Moses became acquainted with Yahweh and was converted to his worship in the land of Midian in the Kenite sib.
4. The reasons which led Moses to become the messenger of Yahweh and undertake the mission of delivering his people from bondage and pledging them to Yahweh’s service we can, by reading the narrative of Ex. 3:1-14 in the light of our knowledge of psychology and of the history of religion, reconstruct with a good degree of accuracy. In all parts of the world and in all religions men of a certain type of psychic constitution, after seeking for the solution of a religious problem and brooding long over it, have found their problem solved in a flash of insight so sudden and clear that they have seemed to hear a voice uttering the words in which their thought took shape. Such experiences are called ‘auditions/1 and those who have experienced them have believed that the voice came from God. In many instances the illumination thus experienced has been the beginning of a prophetic career. The recipient is more sure of what he has heard than of his ordinary experiences and is thereby strengthened to endure opposition and persecution and to speak with an intense authority which carries convinction to his hearers. It was in this way that Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Mohammed, George Fox, Sadhu Sundar Singh, and a host of others received in the crises of their lives the illumination which made them what they were. Human psychology does not change. Rituals develop and traditions grow, but the workings of the human mind remain constant. However much knowledge may be enlarged, the fundamental workings of the human mind remain the same. It is for this reason that in the story of the book of Exodus we can be sure of the historical character of the religious experience of Moses. No one in antiquity could invent it who had not had such an experience, and, if he had had such an experience, he would have been too intent on his own prophetic work to invent such an experience for another.
1 See Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, London, 1909, and the article “Mysticism” in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.334
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The circumstances were these. Moses, indignant at the wrongs inflicted on his brethren in Egypt, had killed an Egyptian and fled the country. He found asylum with Jethro, a priest of Midian, married his daughter, and tended Jethro’s flocks. The Midianites were a nomad folk, the range of whose migrations extended far down toward the present-day Medina, where there are extensive beds of lava which testify to comparatively recent volcanic activity.1 One mountain there was in active eruption as late as the year 1256 A.D.2 The description of Yahweh’s descent on the holy mountain is, as a number of scholars have pointed out, the description of a volcanic eruption.3 No such eruption has taken place in the peninsula of Sinai within historic time. The Horeb of Moses’ vision must, therefore, have been further to the southeast in the peninsula of Arabia. Wandering with the flock amid the stillness of the desert fastnesses, Moses brooded on the acute problems of life as he had experienced it. The wrongs of his brethren, his own exile, the nature of the desert god whom his father-in-law served. Life in the desert was fierce and relentless, and so was Yahweh. Nearby was the volcanic mountain, the smoke of which was believed to indicate Yahweh’s presence and whose belching fires expressed at times Yahweh’s wrath. No wonder that Yahweh was believed to be a jealous god! This belief gave courage to his followers in their conflicts with their neighbors, and their victories made them believe that Yahweh was invincible in war.4 The Kenites were the smiths5 of their day. They could make metal weapons6 which gave them a great advantage over their foes, who had only flint arrows and stones.7 The god of the smiths was necessarily a victorious god. Under the circumstances the thought that, if his people could only gain the help of Yahweh, they might escape from the intolerable conditions of Egypt, must often have crossed his mind. One day
1	Cf. Studies in the History of Religion presented to Professor Toy, p. 195.
2	See Wiistenfeld’s translation of Samhoudi’s History of the city of Medina, and ZDMG, LXIII, 506-530.
3	Cf. Ex. 19.
4	Ex. 15:3.
5	Qeni (Kenite) is from a root meaning ‘fit together,’ ‘fabricate,’ ‘forge.’ It is from the same root as the name Cain, and Cain was father of metal-workers.
6	Cf. Gen. 4:22.
7	Gen. 4:23, 24.YAHWEH
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as he watched the flock grazing at the back of the sacred mountain, he saw a flame shooting from the mountainside which seemed like a bush on fire. He approached to obtain a better view, when he seemed to hear a voice bidding him act as though on holy ground. Continuing, the voice declared itself to be the voice of Yahweh; it informed Moses that he had seen the affliction of the Hebrews in Egypt, and commissioned Moses to go and, in Yahweh’s name, lead them out. This was a religious experience as genuinely real as that which any prophet ever had, and its main elements shine out still through the phraseology of later tradition. That phraseology assumes the results of historical processes which we now know to have been later,1 but the religious emotional brooding over the problems of himself and his people, and the sudden conviction that this powerful god of the desert, in whose territory he had himself found asylum, had sent him to rescue his people, bears all the marks of psychological reality, and alone accounts for the subsequent career of Moses. In obedience to the voice of Horeb he went to Egypt and preached with such intense conviction that he persuaded an incredulous people to follow him into the desert to the sacred mountain. When they reached it, Jethro celebrated a sacrifice by which he initiated Moses and Aaron into Yahweh7s priesthood,2 after which, Moses and Aaron officiating, a covenant sanctified by sacrifice was made,3 4 whereby the people bound themselves to serve Yahweh, and Yahweh became their god. The first step was thus taken in the differentiation of the religion of the Hebrews from the religion of other Semites. It is to be noted that this experience was interpreted by Moses in accordance with the ideas and conceptions of the universe which prevailed in his time. He doubtless ceased to worship other gods and paid his homage to Yahweh alone, as he believed Yahweh demanded, but this did not make him a monotheist. A monotheist believes that there is and can be no God but one. The first commandment as J gives it is: “Thou shalt worship no other god;774 as E gives it: “Thou shalt have no other gods in
1	Such is the phrase “God of thy fathers,” which identifies Yahweh with other gods.
2	Ex. 18:12.
3	Ex. 24:1-11, verses 1-2 and 9-11 give the J account of the sacrifice. Verses 3-8 give the E account of it.
4	Ex. 34:14.336
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my presence.”1 In either form the command presupposes the reality of the existence of other gods, and reveals the fact that Hebrew monotheism was not yet born.2
5. This brings us to the problem of the real nature of Yahweh, the meaning of his name, his origin, and his relation to other Semitic gods. That he caused the volcanic mountain to blaze and smoke (Gen. 19:24; Ex. 19:16-24), and that he was a man of war (Ex. 15:3) has been already noted. From this last characteristic one of his most common epithets, Yahweh Sebaoth, ‘Yahweh of armies’ or ‘Yahweh of hosts/ is derived. Translated by the LXX as wavTOKparcop, it entered the Christian creeds as ‘God Almighty’— a phrase in which the original significance has been transfigured. But Yahweh had other functions also. He was the storm-god. He manifested himself in cloud and thunder and lightning (Jud. 5:4; Ps. 18:7 ff.; Eze. 1:4 ff.; Hab. 3:4 if.; 1 Sam. 7:10; Job 38:1,5). In parts of the habitat of the Midianites, such as the peninsula of Sinai, violent thunderstorms occur at some seasons of the year, and it was natural to attribute these to the same deity who caused the smoke and fire of the volcano. But Yahweh performed for his people more vital functions as well. He was the God of fertility. It was he who ‘opened the womb’ (Gen. 29:31; 30:22; 49:25; Ex. 13:2; Ps. 127:3), or ‘shut up the womb’ (1 Sam. 1:5,6). So sacred were the genitals to him that oaths by Yahweh were taken upon them (Gen. 24:2). He caused grass to grow and herbs to feed cattle and men (Gen. 1:11, 12; Ps. 104:14). Of all these functions, there can be no question as to which is oldest and most original in the mind of one who has pondered the evidence presented in the preceding chapters.
The Semitic cults which were universal and old were cults of fertility; the deities were originally the spirits of springs and of trees, and became the givers of life and the creators of children. There can be little doubt, then, that Yahweh was originally a god of this cult, that his name was given as an epithet descriptive of him as one who performed for his worshippers the functions of such a
*Ex. 20:3.
2 Albright’s argument for the monotheism of Moses (Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible, p. 163 ff.) is particularly weak. The effort of Ikhnaton had died in Egypt a century and a quarter before Moses, and there is no evidence for the supposed Kassite monotheism; cf. George Foote Moore, History of Religions, I, New York, 1913, p. 242.YAHWEH
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deity, and that his functions as volcano-god and rain-god were later acquisitions due to the features and the climate of the region in which the Kenite-Midianites roamed, and that his reputation as a god of war grew out of the successful issue of their contests with other tribes. Since this is so, one should look for the origin of his name in an epithet descriptive of him as a giver of fertility and life. The name is supposed to have existed in three forms: Yahweh, Yahu1 (or Yaho2) and Yah.3 In reality but one real form of the name existed and that was the full form Yahweh. Yahu4 should be read Yahw and is merely a defective writing of Yahweh, Yah is simply a hypochoristicon. What, then, is the meaning of the name Yahweh?
Many etymologies have been offered and many meanings of it proposed. It has been explained as a Kal form of the Hebrew verb rrn, meaning ‘He who is/ or ‘The self-existent one’;5 as Kal in a future sense, meaning ‘He will be it/6 i.e., all that his servants look for or ‘He will approve himself’ in the sense that he will give evidence of his being, or assert his being, or reveal himself, or enact history,7 or ‘he will be with us/ i.e., in battle,8 as a Hiphil, meaning, ‘He who causes to exist/9 from mil = mil, meaning either ‘He who causes being’ or ‘life/10 or ‘He who gives existence/11 or ‘He who brings to pass/12 i.e., performs his promises; as a Hiphil from mil, meaning
1	The form so read occurs in the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine; cf. Sachau, Aramäische Papyrus und Ostraka aus Elephantine, Leipzig, 1911, no. 1.
2	In Hebrew proper names such as Yehoshua. It is doubtful, however, whether this was the original pronunciation. It may have been Yahweshua.
3Cf. Ex. 15:2; 17:16, etc.
4	This view is now generally accepted. When the writer translated the papyrus for his Archxology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1916, p. 387 ff. he followed the opinion then prevailing among scholars and read the name Yahu.
5	So Dillmann, Com. üb. Ex. ad loc.; Franz Delitzsch, Com. über Genesis, 1872, pp. 26 and 60; and Oehler, Theol. of 0. T., §39.
6	So W. R. Smith, British and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1876.
7	S. R. Driver, Studia Biblica, I, 17; Hommel, Ancient Hebrew Traditions, 114; and Marti, Theologie, 3te Auf., p. 61 n20.
8	Skip with in Jewish Quarterly Review, July, 1898.
9	W. F. Albright, Archxology of Palestine and the Bible, 1931, p. 164.
10	Gesenius, Thesaurus, 1839, p. 577n; E. Schrader in SchenkePs Bibel Lexikon; and Schultz, Theologie, 2te Auf., 487 if.
11	Kuenen, Religion of Israel, pp. 279, 398.
12	Lagarde, ZDMG, XXII, 331, Symmicta, I, 104; Psalterium juxta Hebraeos Hiero-nymi, 153 ff.; Orientalia, II, 27-30, and gel. Anzeigen, 1885, p. 91; also Nestle, Isr. Eigennamen, p. 88 ff.338
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‘He who sends down (rain) f1 as an Afel of HWY, meaning ‘he who causes to love passionately;’2 and from Jah3—an exclamation of awe or honor4 or a borrowing from Babylonia.5 Is it possible to sift these varying opinions and reach any solid ground on which to rely? It should be noted that strict philological accuracy excludes from consideration all etymologies which derive the name from the root ¡m If derived from that root, the name should be ‘Yahyeh,’ but it is in reality Yahweh.6 We are compelled, therefore, to derive it from a root fYlM, and the one known root which affords a meaning that harmonizes with any of the known pre-Mosaic attributes of Yahweh is the verb HWY. If the name originated among the Kenite-Midianites, there might be some question as to whether they spoke Amorite, which was practically identical with early Hebrew, or Arabic, but, since Hebrew affords no satisfactory etymology and Arabic does and, since there is some reason for believing that the epithet is older than the Midianites, derivation of the name from the Arabic stem proposed seems justified by all considerations. It apparently applied to a god of life and fertility and characterized him as ‘He who causes to love passionately.’ The causative form of the name is analogous to the causative element in the name of the Phoenician god Shepesh.7 After Yahweh had been adopted by the Hebrews as their God, it was inevitable that the Arabian origin of his name should be forgotten, and that attempts, like that of Ex. 3:14 should be made to explain it from Hebrew.
That the name Yahweh was older than the Midianite-Kenites is indicated by its occurrence in Semitic Babylonian proper names at a much earlier time. Ya-wa-ilu,8 meaning ‘Yahweh is god,’ was
1	W. R. Smith, O. T. in the Jewish Church, 423, and Barton, Oriental Studies of the Or. Club of Philadelphia, I, 87.
2	D. B. Macdonald, in the New York Nation, LXXV, 1902, p. 15; Barton, in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible in One Volume, p. 411; in Studies in the History of Religion presented to Professor Toy, New York, 1912, p. 193.
3	So Fredrich Delitzsch and D. G. Brinton.
4	Brinton in Archiv fur Religions Wissenschaft, II, 1899, 226-236.
5	Delitzsch, in Wo lag das Paradies?, 1881, 158 ff., esp. 161 ff.
6	This is shown by the Greek spelling lafie, (in which /? is pronounced v,) as well as by the uniform Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton itself.
7	See above, ch. IX, p. 290.
8	Cf. CT, VIII, 20, 3a and 34, 4a.YAHWEH
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a proper name in Babylonia as early as the first dynasty of Babylon. Waw in Babylonian writing is often represented by m\ hence Ya-um-ili1 is in reality the same name. Johns called attention to the fact that b and p are so nearly identical in cuneiform that, if Yahweh was pronounced laße,2 as Theodoret testifies, Ya-pa-ili3 is also a name in which Yahweh forms an element. From the Kas-site period comes the name Ya-u-bani,4 which appears also to contain the name Yahweh in another cuneiform transliteration, and a granddaughter of Naram-Sin bore a name that may be read Lipush-Iaum,5 ‘Verily Iahweh creates.’ There is also a series of Babylonian names, Arad-Ya, Arad-Yau, Arad-Yama, Arad-Yaba, and Arad-Yapa6 in which the name Yahweh seems to occur. In addition to these Babylonian occurrences of the name, it appears to have entered into the composition of the name of a resident of Taanach in Palestine in the fourteenth century B.C.,7 and into the name of Yau-bidi, a king of Hamath, in the eighth century B.C.8 While the exegencies of ancient transliteration and the absence of the determinative for ‘god’ before these occurrences of Yahweh are thought by some to render the evidence of these names insecure, the probability is that they testify to the antiquity and widespread use of Yahweh as a Semitic divine epithet. It was not, apparently, the most popular epithet of one of the gods of fertility,9 but nevertheless a persistent one and a widely distributed one. It was made by the Kenite-Midianites the sole designation of their deity, and from them taken over by the Hebrews.
6. The way is now clear for a consideration of the problem as to what was the basis of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel? In
1	Cf. CT, IV, 27, 3a.
2	The fact that the Greek ß was pronounced v does not invalidate the correctness of the equivalence of the Babylonian consonants.
3	Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler, VIII, no. 16, 39.
4	BE, XV, nos. 184, 7; 200, i, 37; ii, 16 and 25.
5	Comptes rendus of the Paris Académie, 1899, 348.
6	Cf. Clay, Proper Names, passim.
7	Cf. Sellin, Tell Ta'anek, p. 115, no. 2, 2 and p. 121, no. 2, 2. See also above, p. 326.
8Cf. KAT’, p. 66.
9 That such was the case is confirmed by the Babylonian name Ilu-IB-ilu-Yau, ‘My god IB is the god Yau.’ It has been shown above that IB was a deity of fertility, and this name equates it with the god Yau or Yahweh. (See Cambridge Biblical Essays> p. 49.)340
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other words, what did Moses and his contemporaries understand that they had bound themselves to do in order to retain Yahweh’s favor and the benefits of his presence and help in their corporate life? The Old Testament contains five different answers to this question. According to the J document1 it consisted of the Decalogue of J, now overlaid with Deuteronomic editorial expansions in Ex. 34:14-28. According to E it consisted of the Decalogue now embodied with some Deuteronomic and Priestly expansions in Ex. 20 and in the agricultural and ritualistic code now found in Ex. 20:24-23:19 and called by E ‘The Book of the Covenant.’ According to Amos and Isaiah the basis of the covenant with Yahweh was purely ethical; he required not ritual, but justice between man and man.2 The compiler of the code of Deuteronomy regarded the Decalogue of Deut. 5 and the laws of Deut. 12-26 as the obligations imposed by the covenant. Finally the P document regarded all Levitical requirements and institutions in Ex. 25-31 and 35-40, the book of Leviticus, and the book of Numbers as embraced in the demands of Yahweh and the obligations of the covenant. Of course not all of these mutually exclusive regulations and demands can go back to Moses. Modern research has demonstrated that the regulations of P and D grew up or were codified in the course of Israel’s Palestinian history under the influences of historical situations which are clearly traceable. The ideals of the eighth-century prophets are the ideals of powerful preachers, but not the work of well-informed historians. The agricultural code of E was clearly borrowed from the Canaanites after the settlement in Palestine.3 The Midianite-Kenites and the followers of Moses were, at the time the covenant was made, all nomads.4 Yahweh was a God of the nomads, and for centuries
1	It is assumed that readers of this book will all be familiar with the extensive literature on this subject. Those who are not may obtain the reasons on which the modern analysis is based from C. A. Briggs, The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, New York, 1893; J. E. Carpenter and G. Harford-Battersby, The Hexateuch, Oxford, 1900; W. E. Addis, Documents of the Hexateuch, London, 1898; or J. A. Bewer, The Old Testament as Literature, New York, 1922.
2	Cf. Amos 2:6, 7; 5:11, 12, 14, 24, 25; and 8:4-7; and Isa. 1:12-17.
3	See Olmstead, History of Palestine and Syria, ch. VIII.
4	Cf. Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, Ch. I, and note the nomadic ideals of the Rechabites, 2 Kings 10: 15-17 and Jer. 35: 2-19. The passage from Jeremiah show that they maintained the nomadic ideal until the fall of the kingdom of Judah.YAHWEH
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afterward his most devoted followers cherished the nomadic ideal. The E document therefore does not afford the real basis of the covenant at Horeb.1 Our nearest approach to the actual terms of that fateful historical agreement is found in the Decalogue of J, though even that has, in the process of long transmission by an agricultural people, received two or three agricultural additions. When these are removed, the Decalogue reads somewhat as follows:
1.	Thou shalt worship no other god.2
2.	Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.3
3.	The feast of the Passover thou shalt keep.4
4.	The firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb.5
5.	All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem.6
6.	None shall appear before me empty.7
7.	Six days shalt thou work and on the seventh thou shalt rest.8
8.	Thou shalt observe the feast of ingathering.9
9.	Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened
bread, neither shall the sacrifice of the Passover remain until the morning.10
10.	Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.11
It will be observed that these ten requirements12 are simple statements which could be numbered on the fingers and be carried in the memory. A study of them is most illuminating. The first one expresses Yahweh’s jealousy.; he will not tolerate that his followers should divide their allegiance with another god. This is not monotheism, as the reality of other gods is not denied. It is only an expression of the fierce intolerance of the god of the volcano and of
1	For a recent penetrating study of the laws of E see Julian Morgenstern’s Book of the Covenant, Cincinnati, 1928-30.
2	Ex. 34:14.
3	Ex. 34:17.
4	Ex. 34:18a. Probably ‘unleavened bread’ is an agricultural emendation.
5	Ex. 34:20a.
6	Ex. 34:20c.
7	Ex. 34:20d.
8	Ex. 34:21.
9	Ex. 34:22c.
10	Ex. 34:25.
11	Ex. 34:26b.
12	It is stated in Ex. 34:27, 28 that these requirements are the ‘ten words,’ or, as commonly translated, ‘commandments.’342
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the desert. Idols carved out of wood are not prohibited, but only ‘molten gods’—expensive metal idols. This command is a survival of the more primitive form of Yahweh-worship—a form antedating the time when a portion of his followers became metal-workers or Kenites. The whole Decalogue is ritualistic in character. It lays down the simple things which Yahweh asked of his nomadic worshippers. They were to observe the two great feasts of the Semitic desert-world: the feast of the yeaning time in the early months of the year, called pesakh, common to the whole Semitic world, but by P interpreted as a commemoration of the exodus from Egypt, and the feast of the ingathering of the date harvest. At these festivals everyone must bring an offering: “None shall appear before me empty.” The firstborn of animals and men are Yahweh’s and by rights should be sacrificed to him, but the firstlings of asses and of human beings may be redeemed by substituting a lamb.1 No sacrifice may be eaten with leavened bread, and the sacrifice of the Pesakh must be consumed before morning.2 A kid may not be boiled in its mother’s milk, and every seventh day is taboo to Yahweh; no work may be done in it.3 Such were the simple requirements of Yahweh’s ritual. These simple details formed a part of all subsequent codes. Modified in some respects and elaborated in detail, they, with one or two exceptions, remain constant. This simple Decalogue is not interested in ethics, but in worship. It informed the Hebrews what Yahweh, their adopted God, demanded of them in the way of service. It was not until later that they came to think of him as interested in their conduct toward one another. At this time they came into his service as a group; their attitude towards one another remained what it had been; this ritual service Yahweh demanded of them all; it was on condi-
1	Had the ancient Semite had a sense of humor, he would hardly have allowed the ass precedence over his firstborn son.
2	The sacrifice of a camel, witnessed by Theodulus, son of Nilus, among the Arabs in the fourth century A.D., in which |the flesh had to be consumed before sunrise, proves this to have been in accordance with an ancient Semitic custom, which, among the Arabs, persisted far into the Christian era. Cf. Nili opera quaedam nondum edita, Paris, 1639, p. 27, and W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., pp. 166, 227, 281, 338, 361, 363, and 364.
3	On the origin of the Sabbath, see “Sabbath, Critical View” in the Jewish Encyclopedia.YAHWEH
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tion of the bringing of these firstlings or their substitutes, offered in the way demanded, the observance of these time-honored festivals, cessation of the worship of other gods, doing without molten idols, and observing the day that Yahweh had reserved for his own, that Yahweh would be their God, fight their battles, give them food and offspring, and do for them all that any people could desire a god to do. With a God of such a reputation for power, victorious in war, able to smite with thunderbolt or volcanic flame and lava, but, to those who worshipped him, able to ‘open the womb’ and also give food, the escaped bondsmen of Egypt felt safe. So fiercely devoted to him did they become that in time they converted to Yah-weh’s services those who were in Palestine before them and among whom they settled.
For a people to change its god was something new in the Semitic world. Gods were related, it was thought, to their worshippers by kinship; they could no more cast off their worshippers than a man could disown his relations—an act which, in ancient desert society, generally meant death. But Yahweh had chosen these Hebrews; the bond which bound them to him contained conditions. If these conditions were not fulfilled, he might cast them off and choose another people. In this fact there lay, in the providence of God, the possibility of the future birth of a religion such as the world had not yet seen.
It is noteworthy that nothing is said in this covenant about circumcision, and that in the J document the little that is said concerning this rite leaves us somewhat perplexed as to its real place in the cult at this period. We are told in Ex. 4:24, 26 that, when Moses was on the way to Egypt to persuade his brethern to come out, “On the way at the lodging Yahweh met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at his feet; and she said, Surely a bridegroom of blood art thou to me. So he let him alone. Then she said, A bridegroom of blood, because of the circumcision.” The implications of this statement are most instructive. Yahweh seeks to kill Moses because Moses has not been circumcised. Instead of circumcising Moses, Zipporah circumcises her son Gershom and smears the blood on Moses (‘feet’ is a euphemism for genitals1), and said, ‘Thou art
1 Cf. Ruth 3:4,7, and Isa. 7:20.344
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
my bloody bridegroom’; whereupon Yahweh desisted from his attempt to kill Moses. It would appear, then, that Yahweh was believed to require circumcision of males and that this rite was usually performed at the time of marriage, and that Moses had neglected to conform to the regulation. He fell sick and it was believed that he would die because Yahweh was angry at the neglect of this rite. By circumcising the boy and smearing the blood on the appropriate part of Moses’ body and stating that he was a bloody bridegroom (all the ancients had great faith in the magic power of a spoken word), Yahweh accepted Moses as a circumcised person and permitted him to proceed on his mission. The only other reference to circumcision in the J document is in Joshua 5:2, where it appears that the fighting men of Israel had not been circumcised,1 and the rite had to be performed just as they were entering on a war. From these accounts it would appear that Yahweh required circumcision and that the proper time to perform it was at the time of marriage, but that the practice was not rigidly enforced. If, however, one were going on a difficult mission, such as waging a war or upon a prophetic mission, like that of Moses, in order to secure Yahweh’s cooperation and help, circumcision was deemed to be necessary. Yahweh would resent in such people a negligence which he might overlook in persons engaged in less holy or hazardous tasks.
7. The implements of the cult of Yahweh in time of Moses were very simple. Moses had a tent pitched without the Hebrew camp, called the Tent of Meeting, to which he resorted to obtain oracles from him.2 Later generations believed that Yahweh spoke to him there face to face. It is probable that the tent contained an ephod or some instrument of divination or the casting of lots by means of which oracles were obtained. It is possible that Moses, who had received his prophetic call in an audition at the burning mountain, heard, in auditions in this tent where Yahweh was believed to come, other messages.
1	The phrases ‘again’ and ‘a second time’ are clearly the work of a later editor who was shocked that the regulation in force in his day to circumcise on the eighth day had not been observed, and, who added these words that men might not be encouraged by the example of the ancients to neglect so important a law. They could hardly circumcise themselves a second time without anticipating the wish of St. Paul: o<pe\ov ical aTTOKoypovTai ot ’avaorarovvTes vfxas (Gal. 5:12).
2	Ex. 33:7-11.YAHWEH
345
In addition to the tent there was an ‘ark’ or box in which was a sacred stone. Later tradition believed that it contained two stones and that the ten commandments had been inscribed on them by Yahweh himself. Many peoples have found an anaerolite a sacred symbol given from heaven itself,1 and it is probable that this ark held a volcanic stone from Yahweh’s own mountain. Wherever the nomads roamed, this stone was a symbol of Yahweh’s presence. The P document has transformed the Tent of Meeting into a curtained temple patterned on the temple of Solomon, and filled the simple box with other imaginary things, but the presence of this ark in the temple at Shiloh2 and its history until the reign of David3 vouch for its historical character. It was probably kept in the Tent of Meeting. Probably Moses cast the sacred lot before it, and possibly the awe begotten by its sacred stone helped him to oracular auditions.
In the J document the sacrifices of this period are thought to have involved feasts in the interest of the worshipper, i.e., they had a commensal element. Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel “beheld God and did eat and drink:” (Ex. 24:11). For long afterward this was the chief feature of the sacrificial feasts; cf. 1 Sam. 1 and 2.
8. The question as to the history and nature and worship of Yahweh before the time of Moses has already been answered, but, for the sake of clearness, a few words of recapitulation may not be out of place. Yahweh was an epithet applied to one of the deities of fertility, apparently for more than a thousand years before the time of Moses. Some of those who employed the epithet wandered from Arabia to Babylonia and some to Palestine. There is nothing to indicate that at first and for several centuries the deity worshipped under this name differed from other Semitic gods of fertility. His followers, like other Semites, celebrated the two great festivals of the Semitic world, and were expected to circumcise their males at marriage. They represented Yahweh by inexpensive images carved from wood. This epithet was appropriated by the
1 Such was the symbol of Artemis at Ephesus (Acts 19:35) and the ‘black stone* in the Kaaba at Mecca.
21 Sam. 3-6.
3 2 Sam. 6.346
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Midianites as the sole appellation for their god. As they roamed in a territory at one end of which a volcano was situated and in the other end of which heavy rains occurred in winter, their Yahweh became the god of the storm and of the volcano as well as the giver of life. Their success in war with their neighbors made him, too, a god of war. A sib of this group became smiths, a fact that gave them a special advantage as fighters and enhanced Yahweh’s warlike reputation. Such seems to have been the previous history of the deity whose messenger to the oppressed Hebrews Moses became in their hour of need, and to whom he bound them by sacrificial covenant.
Having obtained as clear a view as the sources of information will permit of the problems connected with the origins of Yahweh and the work of Moses, attention should next be given to the problem of how Yahweh became the God of all the Hebrew tribes, and how the settlement in Palestine affected his worshippers’ conception of him and their worship of him. It seems clear that but a fraction of the ancestors of the Hebrews had been in Egypt, and that, by the time of Moses, the majority of the tribes that entered into the composition of the Israelitish nation had been settled in Palestine for a century and half. These tribes were partly Amorite and partly Aramaean, and already had their own deities. Each considerable village had its god and goddess of fertility, its Baal and Ashtart. Among the tribe of Asher this deity had been known as Asherat. At Bethel, Schechem, Beersheba, and elsewhere, the god El had long had sanctuaries. In Gad the deities Gad and Meni were worshipped, and doubtless there were others which we cannot now trace.
Whether the Hebrews who were in Egypt were the tribe of Levi, as Olmstead thinks, or the Rachel tribes, as the present writer would prefer to believe, we can trace their penetration of the land at two points, the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Ephraim. By the time of Saul the Kenites were living in southern Judah,1 and by the time of David they possessed several cities which were regarded as cities of that tribe.2 Later the Chronicler traced the lineage of the Calebites and Bethlehemites to the Kenites, and tells us that
1 Cf. 1 Sam. 15:6.
21 Sam. 30:26-29.YAHWEH
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even David himself came of a Kenite family.1 In the period of the Judges, Jonathan, son of Gershom, and the grandson of Moses, was born in Bethlehem and started from that city to seek his fortune.2 The Yahweh-worshipping Kenites, we thus know, constituted an important part of the tribe of Judah, in which the family of Moses had settled.3 That participants in the covenant with Yahweh had settled in Ephraim is vouched for by the fact that they had established at Shilloh a temple to Yahweh, in the holy place of which was the ark that had been brought from the wilderness.4
Although the details of the actual historical process which followed have been lost in the mazes of tradition, enough is known to enable us in outline to reconstruct that process with considerable confidence. The first step would be the establishment by the new invaders of alliances with their neighbors. This, though a gradual process, was a necessary condition of survival. The second step was the spread by the ardent devotees of Yahweh of the tales of his prowess among their neighbors and allies. The story of their deliverance from Egypt by the providential blowing back of the Red Sea by Yah-weh’s winds,5 the tale of Yahweh’s aweful appearance on the burning mountain,6 spread through the land like magic, and soon became the popular sagas of all the people. Yahweh, as an epithet, had been known to some of their Amorite ancestors,7 and it was not difficult for them all, by means of this epithet, to see in this awful god one or another of their own ancestral deities. Through the alliances the process spread rapidly so that, by the time the song of Deborah was composed, Yahweh had been so far adopted as a divine name by all the tribes that the poet can assume that they were all his worshippers.8 Through oft repetition in the gates of the towns, where in all ages the men of Palestine have congregated for converse,9 the
1 1 Chr. 2 up to verse 55.
2Cf. Jud. 17:7 and 18:30.
3	As many scholars have noted, this merging of the Kenites in the tribe of Judah explains why the Judaean writer J thought the worship of Yahweh was primeval.
4	See 1 Sam. 3-6.
5	Ex. 14:21b.
6	Ex. 19.
7	E.g., to the parents of Akhi-Yawi in Taanach; see above, p. 326.
8	Jud. 5:3, 5, and 23.
9	For an excellent statement of how effective a means the city gate still is, see W. Ewing, Paterson of Hebron, London, 1930, 179.348
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
thrilling experiences of the fugitives from Egypt and the marvelous deeds of Yahweh became so popular that they formed in both north and south the central theme of tribal and national epic. So popular did they become that singers of popular songs celebrated them in their lays. A fragment of one of these is preserved in Nu. 21: 27-30. In time a compilation of such poems called “The Book of the Wars of Yahweh” was made1—one of the earliest pieces of Hebrew literature of which we have knowledge. By all these means the Yahwehization of the older cults was hastened.
A third step was the coalescence of the cult of Yahweh with the cults of the deities previously worshipped. Scholars have often pointed out that, after the settlement in Palestine and the transformation of the nomads into an agricultural people, Yahweh was transformed into an agricultural deity and became a Baal.2 Doubtless for the centers, in which the fugitives from Egypt who had actually adopted Yahweh at Horeb, or their immediate descendants settled, this is true;3 but, if only a small part of the Hebrews were in Egypt and the process of the spread of Yahwehism just sketched is at all true, the Yahwehization of the Baals was much more extensive than the Baalization of Yahweh. By the application to the Els and the Elohim of different shrines of the name Yahweh, these shrines with all their cults, myths, traditions, and paraphernalia became Yahweh’s. Traditions as to how Abraham had built the altar of El at Bethel,4 and how Jacob had set up his masselah and how El appeared to him there,5 came to be regarded as accounts of how these things had been for Yahweh and by him under another name. Although the name
1A quotation from this survives in the Old Testament in Nu. 21:14, 15.
2	See e.g., Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, ch. II, and the writer’s Semitic Origins, p. 297 if. and his Religion of Israel, ch. V.
3	It was an axiom among all ancient peoples that, if they settled in a new land they must, in order to avoid disaster, pay homage to the god of the land. Thus, when David fled to Moab he said: “They have driven me out this day that I should not cleave unto the inheritance of Yahweh, saying, Go serve other gods” (1 Sam. 26:19). The request of the five peoples settled by Sargon in Samaria to have a priest to ‘teach them the way of the god of the land’ is also a case in point. Even Yahweh’s command, ‘Thou shalt worship no other god’ was not sufficiently powerful to induce comers into a new land to practise continual rudeness to its celestial overlords.
4	Gen. 12:7.
5	Gen. 28 and 35:7.YAHWEH
349
Yahweh was now applied to all the former deities of the land, their older titles and names were not all disused. They were still called Baal or Yahweh indiscriminately. Saul1 and David,2 both ardent worshippers of Yahweh, applied the name Baal to him. Yahweh was worshipped along with Ashtart (Ashtoreth) in all the old shrines of the land3 and, after the building of the temple by Solomon the Ashera, the sodomites, and sacred women formed a part of his cult until the reform of Josiah.4 In one ancient poetic passage Yahweh is himself called Asher.5 Under these circumstances it was inevitable that in all the shrines of the land the immemorial cults should go on as before. A new name for deity had become the supreme deity of their thoughts; the traditions connected with his awfulness and power thrilled them; the hope that he would give them victory over their enemies and security in their land rose strong within them, but his coming had wrought no great reform in their worship and no appreciable elevation of their moral ideals. In Mount Ephraim Micah built a temple to Yahweh and placed in it both a carved idol and a molten idol,6 though the latter was contrary even to the second command of J. Jonathan, the grandson of Moses, whom Micah had employed as a priest, upon being persuaded that it would be more profitable to be priest to a tribe than to one man, stole all of Micah’s movable paraphernalia and ran away with it to the city of Dan, where he established a new temple, became its priest,7 and transmitted its office to his descendants. Wherever Hebrew places of worship have been uncovered abundant evidence of the perpetuation of the old fertility cults down to, or
1He named his son Ish-Baal, 1 Chr. 8:33. The compilers of Samuel distorted it to Ishbosheth; 2 Sam. 2:12 ff.
2	See 1 Chr. 14:7.
3	This is revealed by excavations such as those at Gezer and at Tell-en-Nasbeh. For the discoveries there see R. A. S. Macalister, the Excavation of Gezer, London, 1912, and W. F. Badé, Palestine Institute Publications, no. 1 ff., Berkeley Cal., 1928, 1930.
4	Cf. 2 Kgs. 23:6, 7.
5	Cf. Deut. 33: 29. The passage should be translated:
“Happy art thou, O Israel,
A people saved by Yahweh,
The shield of thy help,
And Asher, the sword of thy excellency.”
6	Jud. 17:4, 5.
7	Jud. 17 and 18.350
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
almost to the Babylonian exile are found in abundance.1 Jeroboam’s golden bullocks were symbols of the god of this resultant cult2—the Yahwehized Baal and the Baalized Yahweh. The theory of the Elchist, that for northern Israel the fathers worshipped Elohim until Moses introduced the name Yahweh, is for the larger part of Israel the historic fact. It was^the general religion of the land.
It should be carefully noted how this religion differed from the Yahweh cult of Moses. It was not that the one was monotheistic and the other not; nor that one was without physical representations of Yahweh and the other not; nor that one was highly ethical and the other not; nor that one was devoid of all features of the fertility cult while the other reveled in them. The difference was between two cultures; the simple culture of the nomad and the more luxurious culture of an agricultural people. To the simple nomad the immoral features of fertility worship were reduced to a minimum by the very conditions of his life; to the more prosperous agriculturists they could be made an end in themselves. To the desert dwellers wine was a debasing luxury; to the dweller in Palestine it was the gift of God. To the nomad a house as a dwelling place was a sinful abomination; to the settled population of fertile regions a prime necessity of life. In spite of all the amalgamation and transformation that took place the nomadic ideal never died. The Recha-bites kept it alive down to the Babylonian exile.3 Others, too, in the east-Jordan lands which lie close to the desert, cherished it. Thence came the prophet Elijah, whose ministry inaugurated a movement of great significance to mankind.
As Moses was the leader who made the cult of Yahweh the religion of Israel, Elijah was the prophet who made that religion moral. Elijah may be called the second founder of Hebrew religion. Neither the movement inaugurated by Moses nor that initiated by Elijah reached fruition in the lifetime of its founder. As Moses bound to Yahweh a small group of Hebrews and it was left to others to Yahwehize the rest of the nation, so Elijah but initiated a movement
1	See the references in p. 349 n3.
2	He could say: “These be thy god, O Israel, that brought thee out of the land of Egypt,” 1 Kgs. 12:28.
3	Cf. 2 Kgs. 10:15 ff. and Jer. 35:2-19. Their vow was to drink no wine, build no houses to dwell in, plant no vineyard, seed no field, but to dwell in tents.YAHWEH
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which later prophets carried to full fruitage. Down to the reign of king Ahab, Yahwehized Baalism was everywhere accepted and practised without question. Saul, David, and Solomon, were all its devotees and champions. So far as we know the conscience of no one was troubled by it. The division of the kingdom after Solomon’s death created an anomoly in the ancient world in that there were now two nations worshipping the same God, but the religious implications of this were not at first felt. The syncretistic cult, the origin of which has been sketched, held unquestioned sway. The jealousy of Yahweh, which in the desert the Hebrews, who had been delivered from Egypt and who had witnessed the fires of the burning mountain, had felt so keenly, had been so toned down that Solomon permitted his foreign wives to have chapels to their gods in Yahweh’s very presence and Ahab permitted his Tyrian wife Jezebel to do the same.
Into this corrupt and contented syncretism Elijah, a devotee of the nomadic ideal, came in the prosperous reign of Ahab as a disturbing element. He was a son of the steppe and lived in according to the simple ideas of the steppe. The Yahweh in which he believed was the austere and jealous Yahweh of the desert. To Elijah the Yahwehized Baals were not Yahweh at all. Those who were worshipping Yahweh under these forms were, to his mind, apostates from the religion of Yahweh; they were devotees of Baal. As such he denounced them; their prophets he called prophets of Baal. Elijah’s preaching, however, was not all negative. Had it been, he would have made no permanent impression. There was a new note in his teaching. Yahweh was, as he proclaimed him, a moral God. He was interested in the ethics of his people. In particular, Yahweh was the champion of the common man; of the small against, the great; of the oppressed subject as against the unjust sovereign. It was this ethical note that roused the hope of the oppressed and gripped the consciences of lovers of justice throughout the nation, so that, after the spectacular career of Elijah had passed,1 others were raised up to continue the work which he had begun.
Jehu, who overthrew the dynasty of Ahab, allied himself for a time with the Rechabites, but it was more for the sake of getting rid of priests and prophets who had been supporters of the fallen
1 See 1 Kgs. chs. 17-19 and 21.352
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
dynasty than because of loyalty to ethical conceptions of religion. Elisha, who followed Elijah, won a greater reputation for working supernatural marvels than as a champion of ethical ideals.1 At some time in the eighth century in northern Israel the author of the E document lived and wrote. In his conception of the basis of the covenant of Yahweh with Israel the ethical Decalogue held the foremost place. Its commands were:2
1.	Thou shalt have no other gods in my presence.
2.	Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, nor the
likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them nor serve them.
3.	Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh to a vanity: (i.e.,
thou shalt not swear to a lie).
4.	Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
5.	Honor thy father and thy mother.
6.	Thou shalt do no murder.
7.	Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8.	Thou shalt not steal.
9.	Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
10.	Thou shalt not covet.
Next to this Decalogue he placed the agricultural code of laws that had grown out of the experience of the Semitic population of Palestine through fifteen hundred or more of years of agricultural life.3 He then completed his code by adding some of the ritual requirements of the earlier Decalogue with agricultural expansions.4 For our present purpose interest centers in E’s Decalogue. It is no more monotheistic than that of J; it does not deny the existence of other gods; it only prohibits their worship in Yahweh’s presence.5 In symbolism it goes further than its predecessor by banishing all images, even cheap idols. It insists, like the Decalogue of J, on
1	See 2 Kgs. chs. 1-8.
2	Cf. Ex. 20:3-17. As the passage stands there are editorial expansions from D and P.
3	Ex. 20:24-23:13.
4	Ex. 23:14-18.
5	The Hebrew phrase liphnai might mean ‘before/ i.e., prior in time. In that case the command would mean in substance ‘worship me first’; the meaning given in the text is, however, more probable.YAHWEH
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the observance of the Sabbath. Seven of its regulations are, however, new and they are all ethical. Three of them (swearing to a lie, bearing false witness, and coveting) are prohibitions of what actually occurred when Ahab and Jezebel took Naboth’s vineyard,1 and it is tempting to believe that these commands were uttered by Elijah. In any event their enunciation by his follower as the ‘ten words’ and their consequent acceptance in later Judaism as the Ten Commandments, is due to the quickening of the moral conscience inaugurated by the ministry of Elijah, and to the conviction that Yahweh is a moral God and judges his followers by moral standards, which Elijah was the first to proclaim.
The moral concept of Yahwehism was continued and advanced by the prophets of the eighth century. It throbs through every utterance of the prophet Amos,2 who went further than his predecessors and declared that Yahweh controlled not only the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, but also the kingdoms of all their neighbors.3 It was Yahweh who brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Aramaeans from Kir,4 and it is he who will punish the sins of Edom, Moab, Damascus, Tyre, Gaza and the rest. Others had thought, and perhaps still thought, that Chemosh ruled in Moab,5 for example, as Yahweh ruled in Israel. Not so Amos; he was a practical monotheist. In his conception of the affairs of the world, Yahweh ruled all. How he came to make his advance in thought, we can only conjecture. It has been suggested that, as Yahweh ruled the affairs of the two Hebrew kingdoms it was a logical extension of thought to suppose that he controlled all kingdoms.6 Whether the division of the Hebrew kingdom was a factor in the birth of this conception or not, the fact remains that Amos was a practical monotheist.
Hosea, a younger contemporary of Amos, taught the same doctrine. He also added the doctrine that Yahweh was a God of love —affectionate love. As we have seen, Yahweh had always been in some sense a god of love. His name signified ‘He who causes to
1	See 1 Kgs., ch. 21.
2	Cf. e.g., Amos 2:6, 7; 3:2; 5:11, 12, 14, 24, 8:4-7.
3	Amos chs. 1, 2.
4	Amos 9:7.
5	See Judges 11:24, a passage from E2.
6	Cf. J. M. P. Smith, The Prophets and their Times, Chicago, 1925, 50-52.354
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
love passionately but that love was what the Greeks called epcos. It was sexual attraction. To Hosea the love of Yahweh was family affection, ipCKla. It was a father’s love: “When Ephraim was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.”2 It was the love of a devoted husband, who buys back a faithless wife from slavery.3 Hosea, like Elijah, held to the nomadic ideal of Yahweh, and to prevent in future the confusion of Yahweh with the Baals, he forbade for the future the application to Yahweh of the term ba'al.4
Isaiah, whose ministry probably began before that of Hosea ended, continued to proclaim both Yahweh’s control of the nations and Yahweh’s prime interest in morals. Both he and Amos go so far in their denunciation of immoral ritual as to declare that ethics, not ritual, is the basis of Yahweh’s covenant with his people.5 Like Hosea, Isaiah held that Yahweh controlled distant and powerful Assyria as well as the nations near at hand. Neither of these prophets could, as yet, think of Yahweh as caring equally for all mankind. They thought of him as caring primarily for his chosen people Israel, and his control of other nations was guided by what he wished to accomplish for Israel. Isaiah represents Assyria as a rod with which a father whips a boy. When the chastisement is accomplished to Yahweh’s satisfaction, Assyria will be broken and discarded.6 The father cares not for the rod, but for the boy. The monotheism of these prophets was thus defective. Micah, the fourth of the quartet of eighth-century prophets, emphasized in his preaching the same doctrines, Yahweh’s control of the world and his ethical interest.7
In the dark days of reaction under Manasseh those who cherished the teachings of the prophets of the preceding generation saw that religion could not live without ritual and worship. There is reason to believe that Isaiah himself had seen this and had endeavored to establish a reformed cult, with the aid of king Hezekiah, that
1	See above, p. 337f.
2	Hosea 11:1.
3	Cf. Hosea chs. 1-3.
4	Hosea 2:16.
5	See Amos 5:14 and 25 and Isa. 1:10-19.
6	See Isa. 10:5 ft.
7	Cf. Micah chs. 1-3.YAHWEH
355
should be in accordance with ethical ideals.1 This thought was cherished and in the reign of Manasseh the code of Deuteronomy was drawn up as an instrument that might accomplish this ideal.2 It proposed to abolish all sanctuaries but one, to cleanse the ritual of the erotic features of prehistoric origin, and it introduced into laws borrowed from the ‘Book of the Covenant* a number of humanitarian features which the ethical teachings of prophets of the previous century had emphasized. This code, found in the temple in the reign of Josiah and pronounced by the prophetess Huldah to be the Law of Moses, was made the basis of the great reform of the year 621.3 That reform forever differentiated the religion of Judah from other Semitic religions.
The ministry of the great prophet Jeremiah followed immediately. At first an enthusiastic supporter of the new law, Jeremiah soon perceived that it was being made a basis for a religion of mere form.4 He accordingly in his later ministry sought in contrast to inculcate a religion of the spirit. Jeremiah was the first theoretical monotheist in Israel. He declared that heathen gods were ‘vanities/5 i.e., non-existent things—figments of the imagination. He also proclaimed the corollary of this truth, that Yahweh cares for all people and will welcome repentant worshippers from any nation whatsoever.6 He also taught the inwardness of religion. Yah-weh’s law, in order to be effective, must be written within, in the heart.7 He also declared the individual, not the family or nation, to be the ethical unit.8 Jeremiah was, in many respects, the greatest of Israel’s prophets.
1	Cf. 2 Kgs. 18:1-4 and 22.
2	The writer is not unaware of the recent discussions of Professor A. C. Welch and others concerning the date of Deuteronomy, but, in his judgment, nothing convincingly in conflict with the long-established critical view has been established. Those not familiar with the discussions are referred to Welch, The Code of Deuteronomy, London, 1924, and his Deuteronomy: the Framework of the Code, Oxford, 1932; also “The Problem of Deuteronomy: A Symposium,” by J. A. Bewer, L. B. Paton, and G. Dahl, in JBL, XLVII, 1928, pp. 305-379.
3	Cf. 2 Kgs. chs. 22, 23.
4	Cf. Jer. 11 :l-8 and Skinner’s Prophecy and Religion, Studies in the Life of Jeremiahy Cambridge, 1926, chs. vi and vii.
5	Cf. Jer. 10:15 and 14:22.
6	Jer. 16:19-21.
7	Jer. 31:31-34.
8	Jer. 31:29, 30.356
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
The story of the Babylonian exile, the work of Ezekiel, of the author of the Code of Holiness, of the priestly writer, and of Ezra and Nehemiah, has been often told,1 and is doubtless known to every reader of these pages. It need not be repeated here. By their efforts the work begun by the author of the Deuteronomic code was completed. Yahweh was identified with the God of the world, the Creator and Ruler of all mankind. In the P document he is a God too majestic to appear to men as he once was believed to have appeared to Moses, but he is a being who commands the worship and awe of men. The Yahweh of the J document, who appeared sometimes to his favorites, is lost, but in his stead there is presented the God of the universe.
1 Among the many books that might be cited are the writer’s Religion of Israel, 2 ed. 1928, and History of the Hebrew People, 1930.EPILOGUE
THE task which we set ourselves at the beginning has been completed. A survey of the origins of social and religious life in the Hamitic and Semitic territory has been made. The best methods known to the writer, anthropological, philological, and historical, have been employed. The late Professor William James once remarked, “You cannot turn up the light quick enough to see the dark.” This is true because when the light is turned up, there is no dark; it has become light. The writer ventures to hope that many of the problems treated have been brought, if not into the light, at least into penumbra, where their outlines can be more clearly discerned, so that some future worker can, when still better methods of investigation have been developed or further facts have been discovered, bring them into the full light of day . Such paving of the way for his successors is all that any investigator can hope to accomplish. He must leave the field to those who, with fuller facts and improved implements, can carry the torch of knowledge with more powerful rays into regions where he is still compelled to grope, grateful if he can have laid a few stones on which they may cross difficult places, or warnings, by disastrous example, that another pathway should be sought.
It is possible that many may be surprised that, by combining facts gathered from so wide an area and interpreting them by well-tested principles, so much of the early movements of peoples and of the beginnings of civilization can be discerned over so wide an area, but, by the scientifically minded, such knowledge will be welcomed. Here and there those who have espoused other theories or are wedded to methods less scientific will demur and criticise, but such criticism is to be welcomed. By it the weak spots in a writer’s work are found and knowledge advanced.
One part of the large area investigated was inhabited by the people who produced the Old Testament. To the facts from Palestine the same methods of interpretation have been applied as to facts from other portions of the Hamito-Semitic territory, and, to
357358
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
the writer’s mind, with illuminating and helpful results. It would seem to be axiomatic, for example, that when we interpret the connection of the god El with certain Palestinian sanctuaries by the now known worship of the pre-Israelite West Semitic worship of a god El, we are on more secure ground than when, from purely Hebrew analogies, we assume that Abraham brought from Mesopotamia a worship of El of which there is scarce a trace among the East Semites. Similarly, when we explain the origin of the name Yah-weh from a Semitic root that has a waw for its middle radical, we are surely on more secure scientific ground than were that illustrious company of scholars who, in desperation because Hebrew contained no proper root with waw, attempted to derive it from a root with yodh as a second radical, even in face of the fact that the conversion of yodh to waw in such a position cannot be paralleled in the whole range of the Semitic languages. Similarly, when the facts before us are interpreted by scientific methods, it appears that Moses was not a monotheist and that the moral Decalogue owes more to Elijah than to Moses. Such conclusions will be unwelcome to all those who have not yet discovered that the revelations of God have always been made through the soul of a man, and that, if the ethical or spiritual conception believed to be revealed commends itself to best religious insight and most enlightened ethical sense, it is as much the voice of God, if it came through Elijah, Amos, or Jeremiah, as it would be, if it came through Abraham or Moses. “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord;” it is through the mystic experience of the Divine on the part of human beings on which all religions are based, and, in accordance with Christian belief, God could reveal himself in fullness to men only by becoming a man, assuming a human psychology, passing through a human experience of the fullness of God, by which he became at once an example and a revelation to men. The human soul is the only instrument through which God has spoken to men.1
In these post-war years many have lost the virility of faith which alone can enable one to be at once a religious devotee and a courageous scientist. This loss is manifested in many ways. Four types of it may be cited here, all of which are characterized by at-
1 This subject will be extensively treated in the writer’s handbook on world-wide mysticism, in preparation.EPILOGUE
359
tempts to ground religion on a basis above and beyond the action of the mind of man.
The most noteworthy of these is the theological movement in Germany led by Karl Barth.1 The substance of the teaching of Barth and his followers is that God is transcendent; we cannot know him; our only hope of knowledge is his miraculous revelation in Christ; that revelation must simply be accepted; we cannot justify it to our reason; we must simply bow and worship it. While the Barthian teaching contains elements of truth (“every error is a truth abused”)? they are so dissociated from other elements equally true as to seem to many healthy-minded thinkers a council of despair.
Less exaggerated in their emphasis than the Barthian school, but still theologically akin to it, are those who insist that all mysticism is to be distrusted, that the mind of man cannot by searching find out God, and that his one hope of knowing God is through revelation. Many successors of the Calvinistic theologians of former times, although they have in many ways departed from the theology of their predecessors, still maintain this view. It is difficult to understand how a revelation can be grasped unless it is comprehensible to the human mind, and how such a grasping of it as to be effective can result in anything but a spiritual mystic experience, but such theologians do not see the problem in his light.
Still another group have gone halfway over to the scientific view, but are still obsessed with the idea that something is lost to our faith, if in the main the older traditions of Old Testament history are not vindicated. Abraham and Moses must have been monotheists. Stones must still be cast at Kuenen and Wellhausen, although the major facts for which those scholars contended are accepted. Had Abraham and Moses really been monotheists all lovers of truth would gladly have acknowledged the fact, but, if the great light
1 Cf., for example, Karl Barth, Der Romerbrief, 3te Auf. Miinchen, 1924, (recently translated into English from a 6th edition), and H. Emil Brunner, The Theology of Crisis, New York and London, 1929; R. Birch Hoyle, The Teachings of Karl Barth, an Exposition, London, 1929; also The Hibbert Journal, April, 1927, pp. 385-400; The Angelican Theological Review, 1927, pp. 116-125; The Lutheran Church Quarterly, July, 1929, pp. 271-288; Walter Lowrie, Our Concern with the Theology of Crisis, New York, 1932. These are but examples. The literature on the subject is very extensive and is constantly growing.360
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
of the truth of monotheism first shone through other “candles of the Lord,” nothing is lost to the faith by admitting the fact.
Finally there are those who welcome criticism as applied to the Old and New Testament, but will not permit it to be applied to the Christian creeds. These must be accepted in their entirety as representing historic fact. Such persons are usually sacramentarians. In a mystic experience unless mediated ritualistically through the sacrament they have no faith. “They subconsciously realize that the practice is derived from a conduct pattern which used to as-sauge their psychic needs.”1 They apprehend their need, but fail to see that often the theory of the sacrament taught leaves aside as a by-product the psychological association and quickening, which was its only real benefit.
To all these classes, except perhaps the last, some of the conclusions which we have reached will be unwelcome. It is, however, the writer’s conviction that a Christian scholar may with open mind follow evidence wherever it may lead, and that sound conclusions of the mind are never really in opposition to the deepest experiences of the soul nor obstacles to those experiences. Because of this, “we can do nothing against the truth but for the truth.”
1 Cf. Gerald Heard’s Social Substance of Religion, New York, 1931, p. 96.ADDITIONAL NOTE
SINCE the manuscript of this book went to the publisher a third poetical text from Ras Shamra has been published by Virolleaud in Syria, vol. XIV, pis. XVIII and XIX, which confirms many of the positions taken in this book, and puts some of the problems discussed in a new perspective. Like poems I and II from Ras Shamra, already referred to in the preceding pages, this third poem is a liturgy. They were, however, liturgies recited at the festivals of Alein at Aphek east of Gebal; this is a liturgy for a festival at Salem, which is, I believe, to be identified with Jerusalem.1 Alein is not named in it and it contains nothing to connect it with any Phoenician shrine. Like certain Babylonian liturgies that were copied by Ashurbanipal in Babylonian temples and taken to Nineveh for his library, Poem III appears to have been copied and taken to the temple library of Ugarit (Ras Shamra) for its literary or antiquarian interest. Possibly it was because it contains the ritual for compelling Asherat of the sea to do the worshippers’ will, and contains also the ritual of the qedashoth.
The writer had reached the conclusion from a study of Poems I and II that these liturgies were composed while the body of the ancestors of the Phoenicians were living to the south of Phoenicia, for the shrine of Alein at Aphek is constantly referred to in those poems as in The heights of the north,’ although Aphek is considerably south of Ugarit. As literagies are always made up of older materials, that would be possible and not at all surprising. This third poem confirms that inference. It not only was written for a city called Salem, but mentions the founding of Ashdod2 and the
1 The writer hopes soon to publish a full translation of the poem and a discussion of all the points involved, probably in the Journal of Biblical Literature. He has also a full translation of Poem II prepared, which he hopes soon to publish in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. His translation of Poem I was published in the last mentioned Journal, Vol. LII, 221-231.
2 The reading ‘Ashdod’ is not absolutely certain, as one of the characters is defective in part owing to the crumbling of the tablet. The reading could, however, be only Ashldy Ashed, or Ashdod. As no such place-names as the first two would presuppose are known, the reading Ashdod is probably correct.
361362
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
devising of the sacred shrine at Qadesh in the wilderness (Kadesh Barnea). When the poem was written, therefore, the ancestors of the Phoenicians were living in Palestine in the ‘field’ between ‘the border of the earth’ (i.e., the seashore) ‘and the border of the desert.’1 Moreover an object found by Professor Grant at Ain Shems (Beth-Shemesh) in Palestine in the summer of 1933, written in the alphabet of Ras Shamra, shows that the region was inhabited by a people who employed the same script.2 The object was found in a stratum of the same age as that which yielded the tablets at Ras Shamra. These facts confirm the position taken above in Ch. Ill as to the route taken by the Amorites in reaching Phoenicia. It explains also a passage in Poem II, iv, 13-19, in which Qadesh and Amurru figure as two spirits which escort Asherat back from her banishment:
Qadesh and Amurru shall prepare to depart,
They shall place Asherat on the back (?) of the colt,
Verily they shall put her on the back of the stallion,
Qadesh shall take them behind (?),
Amurru, like a star, before,
To the shrine of the virgin Anat And Baal.
Qadesh was the southern boundary as Amurru was the northern boundary of the people who composed these liturgies.
It should also be noted that the language of these poems is both in vocabulary and grammar much more closely related to Arabic than is the case with Biblical Hebrew. While it is clearly Hebrew in an early stage of development, it has not yet sloughed off many elements brought from Arabia which were later lost. The etymology of the name Yahweh, proposed on p. 338, might, therefore, have been a good Amorite usage.
In Poem III we have revealed more clearly the explanation of the fact that Asherat is called ‘Asherat of the sea.’ As I have pointed out elsewhere, the enmity of Asherat and the vengeance predicted on the ‘sons of the sea’ seems to be a recollection of the coming into the land of the 2Egean, Cypriote, or Hurrian peoples who brought the pottery of Cypriote type found both at Ras Shamra and at Jerusalem, and with whom the Semitic population had to contend
1	Poem III, lines 61, 62.
2	Cf. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 52, pp. 4, 5.ADDITIONAL NOTE
363
for the mastery. M. Dussaud,1 on the basis of a passage in Herodotus VII, 89, explains these features as recollections of the struggles of the ancestors of the Phoenicians on the Red Sea on their northward trek from Arabia, or in their sea trade with South Arabia—a view which seems to me distinctly less probable than that put forward here.
If the belief of the present writer, that Poem III was compiled as a liturgy for a festival at Jerusalem is correct, it affords another link in the chain of evidence connecting the god El with the later capital of Palestine, and confirms the statements of Genesis 14 that El was worshipped there in the days of Abraham. Further, it affords evidence of the type of worship practised at Jerusalem in the patriarchal period.
As this third poem gives the fullest ritual of the qedashoth yet discovered, it may not be out of place to quote an extract.
The women, as El shall pass by them,2 The women shall cry:
“O Moth, Moth,
We set limits to thy sceptre,
Tearing away the staff of thy hand.”
The bird shall warm on the fire,
Broiling on the coals.
“We are women, each a wife of El And his slave,3 even those women Who cry, ‘O mighty one,
We set limits to thy sceptre,
Tearing away the staff of thy hand.’”
The bird shall warm on the fire,
Even broiling on the coals.
“We are houses, each a house of El And his slave, and are those women Who cry, ‘O Moth, Moth,
We set limits to thy power,
Tearing away the staff of thy hand.’”
The bird shall warm on the fire,
1	Revue de Vhistoire des religions, CVIII, (July-Aug., 1933), 6-49.
2	Poem III, lines 39-54.
3	The word is lalmah, the same employed in the well-known prophecy in Isa. 7:14. Perhaps we should translate ‘young woman.’ But see above p. 301 n. 2.364
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
Even broiling on the coals.
“We are women, each a wife of El,
And his slave.”
He shall purify their lips,
He shall lift them up.
Their lips are sweet,
Sweet as the pomegranate.
With them is kissing and conception;
By embracing the passionate one shall be impregnated:
She shall bring forth.
Shakhar-w-Shalem word to El shall bear,
“Thy wife, O El ,has brought forth.”
“What has she brought forth As my children? O Shakher-w-Shalem?
Offer a perfect one to Shepesh, the Lady,
And to the stars.”
With some variations the ritual is then repeated. The text reveals frankly the functions of the ‘wives of El/ and the purpose of their institution to secure offspring to perpetuate the tribe that employed the cult.ADDENDA
CAUSATIVE STEMS
TO THE discussion of causative stems on page 22, there should be added the fact that the Latin super becomes in Greek huper. My colleague, Professor Speiser, and grammarians such as Brockelmann and Landsberger, doubt the relation between the 5 and ¿ causative stems which I have postulated above, on the ground that there is elsewhere in the Semitic languages no analogy for the change of s to ¿. He, Professor Speiser, tells me that he expects soon to publish a paper setting forth the view that the causative verbal stems were formed by placing before the simple stem the pronoun of the third person, and that there were originally two of these, Su and hu: hence the s and ¿ forms of the causative. This is a brilliant explanation of the origin of these forms, and is so satisfactory that one wonders that it has not been proposed before.
Most languages possess two or three pronouns for the third person, and primitive Hamito-Semitic may have done the same. In addition to the ^-pronoun, it certainly possessed a y pronoun, because the 3rd sing, form of the imperfect of the verb is formed with y both in Hamitic and Semitic. Is it, though, so certain that primitive Hamito-Semitic possessed the s- and ¿-pronouns from the beginning? Such answer as it is possible to make to this inquiry would seem to be deducible from the following facts. The ^-pronoun is found in both families of languages: of the Semitic tongues, it is found in Akkadian, Assyrian, Minaean, Mehri, Am-haric, and Tigrena: of the Hamitic, in Egyptian, Coptic, R/edames, Kabylee, Tamesheq, Bedauye, Saho, Galla, Hausa, and Nama. The ¿-pronoun is found in Semitic only: in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Sabaean, Soqotri (in the masculine, but s in the feminine), Ethiopic (in suffixes; other words have displaced the Semitic forms of the independent pronouns), and Tigre. No ¿-pronouns have survived, so far as I know, in Hamitic, though in Nama, which has lost the simple ¿-sound, there is a pronoun ’i (common gender) 9
365366
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
which might have descended from a form, hi. It exists side by side with an 5-pronoun. In Shilkh and Tamesheq there are also /-pronouns, which, by well-recognized Hamito-Semitic phoneitc laws, are derivable from the 5-pronouns. This evidence would seem to show that the ¿-pronoun was not a primitive Hamito-Semitic word, but was developed in a restricted, section of the Semitic field, from which it was carried by migration. The pronoun *i in the remote Nama tongue, which has been subjected to Bushman influence, is no guarantee that an ¿-pronoun was known to the Hamites. On the face of the evidence, therefore, the 5-pronoun is far older than the ¿-pronoun and has been far more widely employed.
If it were true that s could not, in Hamito-Semitic, be changed to ¿, those languages which employ the ¿-pronoun only ought to employ the ¿-causative only, and ought not to make their causative-reflexive stem with an s. In this respect, however, they are not consistent. The Hamitic dialects with few exceptions form their causative stems with s, and employ the 5-pronoun. Bilin, however,, possesses both an s and ¿-causative, but employs ni as a pronoun. Masai forms its causative by % yi, or ye and employs nine as its. pronoun. Nama forms the causative both by s and 'i and has both 5- and ’¿-pronouns. Little can be inferred, however, from these few exceptions in modern Hamitic dialects, since the languages which exhibit the variations show by many other features that they have been modified in many respects by foreign influences. Among the Semitic languages, Syriac, which employs the ¿-pronoun, uses a Shaphel and Aphel (derived from a Haphel) causative form side by side. The same is true of the north Phoenician (Ras Shamra), texts of the fourteenth century B.C. Arabic, Syriac, and Ethiopic all of which have preserved the ¿-pronoun and lost the 5-pronoun r continue to make their causative-reflexive forms with ist-, est-, in which the causative element is not ¿, but s.
The evidence, then, seems to prove that the 5-pronoun and the ^-causative stems belong to the primitive Hamito-Semitic speech and can be traced back to 10,000 years B.C. or earlier, while the ¿-pronoun and the ¿-causative stems belong to a group of Semitic dialects of peoples who radiated from South Arabia, and that they are not uniformly or consistently applied even by those peoples.ADDENDA
367
Moreover they cannot be historically traced back of 2000 B.C. The scholar who is obsessed by the idea of the rigid uniformity of philological laws will explain these facts by some such theory as that the Morms must always have been in existence, but only happen to crop out here. He will say that, if we had earlier evidence, we should find that these dialects always possessed these forms. It happens, however, that in Minasan inscriptions and Ras Shamra texts we have evidence that these forms did not uniformly prevail even among the people who evidently came to prefer them. The writer is not convinced that philological law is rigidly uniform. Human beings are, some of them, rebellious in all spheres of life. Some philologists admit that there is a small percentage of linguistic phenomena which defy all rules. When all the historical and linguistic facts relating to the problem of the relation between these 5 and h pronominal and causative forms are taken into account, it still seems to the writer that the theory that the Morms were derived from the s-forms by a phonetic change, which did not prevail where these letters occurred in other parts of speech, and which is accordingly an exception to ordinary linguistic rules, is simpler and more probable than any other.
THE LANGUAGES OE ASIA MINOR
The statements on pp. 48 f. concerning the languages in which the materials of the archives of Boghaz Koi were written are confirmed and amplified in Albrecht Götze’s “Kleinasien” in Walter Otto’s Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, dritter Abschnitt, erste Lieferung, München, 1933, especially p. 55.
AHHIYAWÄ IN ASIA MINOR
Doubt was expressed on p. 50 above as to the correctness of the theory of Emile Forrer that Greeks were in Asia Minor in the period 1400-1200 B.C. Forrer had identified the Ahihiyawä with the Achaeans, Attarissia, with Atreus, and Lazpa with Lesbos. Ferdinand Sommer has now given the matter an exhaustive examination in a volume of some 450 pages, in which all the pertinent texts are fully published and discussed—Die Ahhijavä Urkunden, München, 1932. The work is one of the “Abhandlungen” of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Each text is transliterated, translated, and368
SEMITIC AND HAMITIC ORIGINS
annotated with all the exactitude of a great scholar. He does not leave Forrer’s theory a leg to stand on, and characterizes his work as full of inaccuracies, absurdities, and errors. The Ahhiyawâ were not Greeks, and they lived on the south or southwest coast of Asia Minor—not in the western end of the peninsula. For Sommer’s conclusions see especially pp. ix, 357, and 372-378 of his great work.
SEMITIC AND EGYPTIAN VOCABULARIES
To the list of works on this subject cited on p. 94 n. 1 there should be added Albright’s article in JAOS, XLVII, 198-237, and Aaron Ember’s posthumous Egypto-Sentitle Studies, Leipzig, 1930.
THE LEVIRATE AMONG THE HITTITES
In connection with the Semitic Levirate mentioned on p. 101 it should be noted that the Hittite Code, §193 (see Barton’s Archæ-ology and the Bible, 6th ed., p. 424), provides that, “if a man takes a wife and dies, his brother shall take his wife; then his father shall take her; if the father dies, the woman which he married his brother shall take.” It is noteworthy that it seems to be just this type of Levirate which Tamar is said to have forced Judah to observe (Gen. 38). As the Proto-Hittites were akin to the Hurri, it is doubtless true that some of the Hebrew Levirate customs were taken over from this element of their ancestry.
MENHIRS AND GILGALS
To the statement concerning the distrubtion of menhirs and gil-gals on pp. 150f., there should now be added a reference to the objects of this nature found by Azais and Chambard in the provinces of Harar and Guraghé and southern Abyssinia; see R. P. Azais et R. Chambard. Cinq années de recherches archéologiques en Ethiopie, Paris, 1931, pp. 84, 155, 162, 165, and 227. These structures are thus revealed as existing in another of the Hamitic countries.
CIRCUMCISION
Professor James H. Breasted in The Dawn of Conscience, New York, 1933, p. 353, aligns himself with Nowack and Benzinger in holding that Hebrew circumcision was derived from Egypt. To the present writer this view seems to be based on an understanding of a part of the evidence only. Those holding this theory appear to>ADDENDA
369
have in mind Egyptian and Hebrew customs only, and overlook the evidence from the larger area cited on p. 157 above.
NUN, 'FISH5
It is assumed above, (pp. 62f. 233, and 256) that nun was the word for ‘fish* in the language of the Central Asiatic cace. It is interesting to note that the only Semitic languages in which nun means ‘fish’ are the Aramaic and Hebrew, and into the composition of Aramaeans and Hebrews a large Hurrian element entered. That fact should have been cited in favor of the assumption.
THE TENT OF MEETING
On pages 344f. we have discussed the ‘Tent of Meeting,’ which was Israel’s sanctuary in the days of Moses, and the implements of worship and divination which it may have contained. It should be noted that the Septuagint calls it ovcrjvri paprvpiov, the ‘Tent of Witness.’ The Hebrew word for ‘witness’ is 'edh. In Poem III from Ras Shamra, (Syria, XIV, pis. xviii and xix) the *Edh at Qadesh is called the ‘house of El’ (line 65). In an earlier line another 'Edh is something on which crescents can be placed (line 12) and removed (line 18)—perhaps a stone altar or a massebah. This raises the question whether Moses’ tent was not a structure erected in connection with an altar or a massebah. It is possible, however, that the aerolite may, in Moses’ tent, have been the real Beit-el just as the massebah was at Bethel (cf. Gen. 28: 16, 17).
THE GOD ANU
It has only recently become clear to me that Anu is a deity of the Central Asiatic race, which founded the city of Surippak, (see above, p. 60). It is, therefore, explained why he heads the list of the Surippak pantheon. He was brought in late prehistoric time to Babylonia from Central Asia, whence he was also carried to China. In China he was called Tien; in Babylonia, Anu. At Erech, where Anu was also worshipped, a Semitic settlement had overlaid the Asiatic foundation, (above, pp. 58 f.), the worship of anu was fused with that of the Semitic goddess. It seems probable that originally En-lil was an epithet of Anu, which, in the peculiar Babylonian environment, became so popular as to drive Anu into the background.INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
GENESIS:
1:11, 12			 336.
2			 145n2.
2:4b...			 141.
2:8			 145.
2:9			 144.
2:10			 142nl.
2:11-14			 142nl.
2:14, 15			 145.
3			 131, 145n2, 146.
3:3,9			 144.
3:22			 142,144.
3:24			 141.
4:22			 334n6.
4:23, 24			 334n7.
5:21			 325nl.
10					 1.
10:22			 45.
12:7			 348n4.
13:18			 130.
14			 308,363.
14:5			 315n6.
14:13			 83, 130.
14:18ff			 308, 325nl.
15:16			 71.
16:13			 308, 325nl.
17:1			 308, 325nl.
17:5			 308.
17:10-12			 147.
18:1			 130.
19:24			 336.
20:12			 104.
21:13			 308.
23:3ff			 49n3.
24:2			 336.
28			 348n4.
28:16, 17			 369.
29-31			 101.
29:31			 336.
29:31-35			 87n2.
30:1-13			 88n3.
30:18-20			 87n2.
30:22			 336.
GENESIS—continued:
30:22-24			 87n5,
31:13			 308, 325nl.
31:30, 32			 327.
31:34			 327.
33:			 325nl.
34			 149n4.
35:7		. 308, 325nl, 348n4.
35:8			 131.
35:16-19			87n5.
38		.... 87n4, 131, 368.
38:21, 22			 290nl.
46:26			 331n2.
48:5,6			 104.
48:22			 71.
49:25			 336.
EXODUS:	
1-12			 87n6.
1:11			 329.
1:15			 33ln3.
3:1-14			 333.
3:14			 338.
4:24, 25			 147.
4:24, 26			 343.
4:25			 149n4.
6:2			 308.
6:23			 72, 284n7.
12:48			 147.
13:2			 336.
14:21b			 347n5.
15:2			 337n3.
15:3			 334n4, 336nl.
15:27			 131.
17:16			 337n3.
18:1-12			 88nl.
18:12			 335n2.
19			 334n3, 347n6.
19:16-24					 336.
20:3		
20:3-17			 352n2.
20:24 23:13..		 352n3.
20:24	23-19..		 340.
21:10			 289.
371372
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
EXODUS—continued:
21:12-14			 224n7
23:14-18			 352n4.
24:1-11			 335n3.
24:11			 345.
25-31			 340.
28:16,17			 369.
33:7-11			 344n2.
34			 153.
34:14		.... 341n2, 335n.
34:14-28			 340.
34:17			 341n3.
34:18a			 341n4.
34:18-20			 153.
34:20a			341n5.
34:20c			 341n6.
34:20d			 341n7.
34:21			 341n8.
34:22c			341n9.
34:25			 341nl0.
34:26b			341nll.
34:27, 28			 341nl2.
35:40			 340.
41:18			 131.
NUMBERS:	
1:7			 284n7.
13:12			 284n4.
21		. 327n3, 329, 330.
21:14, 15			 348nl.
21:2 Iff			 71.
21:27-30			 348.
32:12... 			 301n3.
DEUTERONOMY:	
1:39			 143.
3:9			 80.
5			 340.
6:12-26			 340.
20-17			 71.
23:17, 18		... 301n3, 307n2.
26:5			 85nl.
32:17			 129.
33:29			 349n5.
34:3			 131.
JOSHUA:	
5:2			 344.
9:21, 23,27			 89nl.
JOSHUA—continued:
10:12			 71.
19:28			 295.
JUDGES:	
1			 329,330.
1:16			 88nl, 131.
1:33			 328.
2:13			 306n8.
3:7			 134, 306.
3:13			 131.
4:5			 130.
5:3, 5, 23			 347n8.
5:4			 336.
6:11			 130.
9:4			 308.
9:46			 308, 325nl.
10:6			 306n8.
11:24			 353n5.
17			 349n7.
17:4,5			 349n6.
17:7			 347n2.
18:			 349n7.
18:30			 347n2.
20:33			 131.
RUTH:	
3			 101.
3:4, 7			 343nl.
4			 101.
4:20			 72.
1 SAMUEL:	
1			 345.
1:5,6			 336.
2			 345.
3-6			 345, 347n4.
7:4			 306n8.
7:10			 336.
12:10			 306n8.
15:6			 346nl.
19:13			 327.
20:5ff			 322n2.
26:19			 348n3.
30: 26-29			 346n2.
2 SAMUEL:	
2:12ff			 349nl.
6			 345.
11:3			 284n5.
13:13			 104.INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
373
2 SAMUEL—continued:
13:37			 284n6.
17:27			 284n2.
1 KINGS:	
1-2			 224n7.
5:15			89nl.
10:lff			-	201n4.
ll:5ff			 307n2.
12:28			 350n2.
15:18			315nl.
17-19, 21		
18:19			 134.
18:27			 20.
21:			 353nl.
33ff			 307n2.
2 KINGS:	
1-8			 352nl.
3:26, 27			310nl.
4:23			 322n2.
5:18			 315n2.
6:24			 315nl.
10:15ff			 350n3.
10:15-17			 340n4.
13:3			 315nl.
18:1-4, 22			 355nl.
22, 23			 355n3.
23:4			 134.
23:6, 7			 349n4.
23:13		. 137, 297n, 307n2.
1 CHRONICLES:	
2:1-55			 347nl.
8:33			 349nl.
14:7			 349n2.
JOB:	
38:1, 5			 336.
PSALMS:	
18:7ff			 336.
18:16			 128.
42:7			 295.
88:10			 144n4.
104:14			 336.
115:17			 144n4.
127:3			 336.
ECCLESIASTES:	
3:11			 308n4.
SONG OF SONGS (Canticles):
6:12			 72.
ISAIAH:	
1:10-19			 354n5.
1:12-17			 340n2.
7:14		.... 301n2, 363.
7:20			 343nl.
10:5ff			 354n6.
14:9-11			 144n4.
38:18			 144n4.
65:11			 327n2, 4.
JEREMIAH:	
7:18			 293n5.
10:15			 355n5.
11:1-8			 355n4.
14:22			 355n5.
16:19-21			 355n6.
31:29, 30			 355n8.
31:31-34			 355n7.
35:2-19		.. 340n4, 350n3.
44:18f			 293n5.
49:27			 315nl.
EZEKIEL:	
l:4ff			 336.
8:1			 155.
16:3			 89n2.
22:11			 104.
30:17			 193.
32:22-30			 144n4.
DANIEL:	
3			 325.
HOSEA:	
1-3			 354n3.
2:16			 354n4.
4:13			 130.
11:1			 354n2.
AMOS:	
1-2			 353n3.
2			 353n3.
2:6, 7		.. 340n2, 353n2.
3:2			 353n2.
5:11, 12, 14, 24			 353n2.
5:11, 12, 14, 24, 25...		 340n2.
5:14, 25			 354n5.
8:4-7		.. 340n2, 353n2.374
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
MICAH:
1-3..........
HABAKKUK:
3:4ff........
ZECHARIAH:
4:12..........
MATTHEW:
2:20..........
JOHN:
17:23........
ACTS:
19:35........
1 CORINTHIANS: 10:20..........
GALATIANS:
5:12.........
HEBREWS:
354n7.	12:29..................... 332n20.
REVELATION (Apocalypse of John):
..	336.	21......................... 145n2.
22:1,2.................... 145n2.
137 REFERENCES TO APOCRYPHA:
Ethiopic Enoch:
10:10................... 145n2.
127.	24................. 131, 145n2.
25...................... 145n2.
Psalter of Solomon:
.. 162.	17...................... 145n2.
REFERENCES TO THE CORAN:
345nl.	Sura 4:23................... 100.
4:26................... 100*
19:23................... 130
..	129.	19:25.................... 130*
33:48................... 103
53:19f.................. 218
344nl.	65:5, 6................... 103INDEX OF AUTHORS
Abel, Ludwig, 85n, 308n, 325n, 328n. Addis, W. E., 340n.
Ælian, 188, 321, 303n.
Albright;, W. F., 51n, 94n, 135, 188n, 287n, 309n, 336n,337n,368.
Alt, Albrecht, 325.
Ammianus Marcellinus, 102.
Amos, 333, 353; see also Scripture Index. Andrae, W., 36n, 76n, 77,125,274n. Antiphanes, 299n.
Arkell, W. J., 89, 90n, 106n.
Arnobius, 300n.
Augustine, St., vii, 149, 153, 293n, 305, 321,333.
Autran, C., 36n.
Ayyar, Vaidyanatha, 37n.
Azais, R. P., 368.
Badé, W. F., 52, 349n.
Baedeker, Karl 185n, 191n.
Baly, T. J. C., 135n, 165n.
Banks, Edgar J., 36n.
Barth, Karl, 359.
Barton, James L., 220n.
Basset, R., 19n.
Bauer, H., 19n, 287n, 312n.
Bauer, Theo, 72n, 74.
Beer, Georg, 323, 332.
Behnk, Frida, 10, 13n.
Belkassen ben Sedira, 19n.
Bent, Theodore, 130n, 154n, 221n, 222n, 224n.
Benzinger, Immanuel, 148n, 157.
Bertin, G., 6, 115n.
Bevan, E., 318n.
Bewer, J. A., 340n, 355n.
Bezold, Carl, 257n, 285n, 289n, 308n. Bickell, E., 317n,
Bissuel, H., 19n.
Black, Davidson, 32.
Blackman, A. M., 197n, 198n.
Bleek, W. H. I., 13n.
Blunt, Lady Anne, 115n.
Borchardt, G., 151n, 180n.
Bork, F., 36n, 44.
Bosch-Gimpera, 10.
Botta, E., 79n.
Boule, M., 14n, 15n, 16n, 31.
Boyd, Harriet, 53n.
Breasted, James H., 10, 74n, 87n, 92n, 106n, 107, 127n, 134, 135n, 151n, 164, 183n, 196n, 199n, 203, 291n, 329n, 368. Briggs, C. A., 340n.
Brinton, D. G., 7, 9, 338n.
Brockelmann, Carl, 5, 19, 118n, 365. Brugsch, Heinrich, 197n.
Brunner, H. Emil, 359n.
Brünnow, R. E., 155n, 271n.
Brunton, Guy, 89, 91n, 121n, 122n. Brynmor-Jones, David, 26n.
Budde, Karl, 131n, 144n, 152n, 330, 331, 340n, 348n.
Budge, E. A. Wallis, 124,164,174n, 180n, 182n, 184n, 187n, 188,285n, 308n. Burney, C. F., 332.
Butin, R. F., 75, 283n.
Buxton, L. H. Dudley, 14n, 31, 39, 40.
Carpenter, J. E., 340n.
Cartier, M., 15n.
Casanova, Paul, 109n.
Caton-Thompson, Gertrude, 84n, 89, 91n, 121n, 122n.
Caulfeild, A. St. G., 177n, 180n, 181n. Chambard, R., 168.
Charles, R. H., 131n.
Cheyne, T. K., 332.
Chiera, Edward, 40,44,45n, 54,61n, 74n, 76, 84, 85n, 257n.
Chudeau, R., 15n.
Clay, Albert T., 8, 9, 71n, 72n, 82n, 250n, 263n, 268n, 284n, 314, 339n.
Clement of Alexandria, 300n, 301n. Clermont-Ganneau, Ch., 302n. Codrington, R. H., 97n.
Coe, G. A., 162n.
375376
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Collitz, Hermann, 299n.
Collizza, Giovanni, 19n.
Conteneau, G., 58n.
Cook, S. A., 6.
Cooke, G. A., 137n, 222n, 296,297n, 298n, 302n, 31 In, 314n.
Cory, I. P., 233n.
Cowley, A. E., 46n, 74, 283n.
Craig, James A., 27In.
Cros, G., 40.
Cust, R., 13n.
Dahl, G., 355n.
Davies, N. G., 179n, 187n. de Genouillac see Genouillac de de la Fuyé see Fuyé.
Deimel, Anton, 61n, 63n, 125n, 126n, 227, 232, 233n, 234n,241n, 242n, 245, 250n, 251n, 253n, 254n, 255n, 256n, 257n, 259n, 262, 263, 267n, 268n, 270, 272n, 276,309n.
Delitzsch, Franz, 337n.
Delitzsch, Friedrich, xv., 36n, 62n, 65n, 145n, 262n, 332,338n.
Derenbourg, Hartwig and Joseph, 201n,
210.
Dhorme, P., 262n, 275, 287n.
Dillmann, August, 337n.
Diodorus Siculus, 303n, 307n, 319. Dougherty, R. P., 55, 82, 225n, 325n. Doughty, C. M., 104, 114n, 115n, 116n, 117n, 129n, 148n, 150n, 153, 154n, 156n, 218n.
Driver, S. R., 3,300n, 301n, 337n. Drummond, Henry, 162n.
Duemichen, (Dr.), 185, 197n.
Dürkop, E., 15n.
Dussaud, René, 317n, 363.
Dyer, Louis, 300n.
Ebeling, Erich, xv., 72n, 77n, 227n, 251, 274n, 315n.
Ebers, Georg, 149n.
Ehelolf, H., 48n, 50.
Ember, A., 94n, 135, 368.
Ephraem Syrus, 149, 153, 217n, 317. Ephraem the Syrian see Ephraem Syrus Epiphanius, 214, 217n.
Erman, Adolf, 10, 19, 26, 74n, 94n, 123n, 135, 164, 168n, 170, 171n, 174n, 175n, 176n, 177n, 178n, 181n, 183, 184n, 186n, 187n, 188n, 189n, 190n, 191n, 192n, 193n, 194n,305n.
Eusebius, 286n, 292n, 296n.
Euting, J., 115n, 117n, 317n.
Evans, Sir Arthur, 53.
Ewing, W., 347n.
Ezekiel, 356; see also Scripture Index.
Faidherbe, G., 19n.
Farnell, Lewis R., 306.
Fell, W., 202, 204.
Fischer, Theobald, 115, 116n, 118, 147n. Fiske, John, 162n.
Flandin, E., 79n.
Forrer, E., 47n, 50, 63n, 77n, 367f. Fotheringham, J. K., 73n.
Foucauld, (M.), 305n.
Fox, George, 333.
Frank, Carl, 46n.
Frankfort, H., 34,35n, 36n, 57n, 59n, 60n. Frazer, Sir J. G., 96, 156n, 197n. Friedrich, Johannes, 47n, 50, 71n, 88n, 263n.
Fuye, Allotte de la, 268n.
Gadd, C. I., 37n.
Gardiner, Allan H., 23n, 74, 124n, 171n, 174n, 176n, 182n, 185n, 186n,187, 188, 190n,192n,193n,197,198n.
Garrod, Dorothy, 51.
Garstang, J., 46n, 47n, 79n, 88n, 330. Gau tier, E. F., 15n.
Gautier, J. E., 180n.
Gayer, A., 197n.
Gehman, Henry S., ix.
Genouillac, H. de, xvi., 250n, 255n, 269n, 270n, 271n.
Gerland, A. A., 6, 9.
Gesenius, W., 20, 337n.
Ghillany, R., 331.
Giddings, F., 116.
Gifford, E. H., 286n, 292n.
Gillen, J., 96n, llOn, U2n, U3n.
Glaser, Edward, 56, 99, 117n, 200, 201. Goeje, M. J., de, 15, 130n.
Golenischeff, W., 201n.INDEX OF AUTHORS
377
Goodrich-Freer, (Miss), 148n.
Götze, A., 50, 367.
Gowen, H. H., 48n.
Grant, Elihu, 362.
Grapow, H., 123n, 168n, 170,171n, 173n, 174n, 175n, 176n, 177n, 178n, 181n, 183n, 184n, 186n, 187n, 188n, 189n, 190n, 191n, 192n,193n, 194n, 305n. Gray, G. B., 164n, 284.
Green, F. W., 172n.
Gressmann, H., 332.
Griffith, F. L., 182n.
Grimme, Hubert, 5.
Grüneisen, C., 145n.
Guidi, Ignazio, 2,3,115n.
Gunkel, H., 147n, 332.
Guthe, H., 332.
Haarbrücker, T., 148n.
Halevy, J., 19n, 56, 200, 212n, 216.
Hall, Edith, 53n.
Hall, H. R., 31, 34n, 39n, 57n, 79n, 228n. Hamilton, (an English traveller), 102n. Handcock, P. S. P., 79n.
Harding, E. E., 152n. Harford-Battersby, G., 340n.
Harper, W. R., 82n.
Harris, Zellig S., ix.
Harrison, P. W., 27, 38.
Hartmann, Robert, 9.
Hastings, James, 3n, 8n, 25n, 116n, 137n, 148n, 152n, 160n, 300n, 332n, 333n, 338n.
Haupt, Paul, xv., xvi., 129n, 145n, 146n, 155n, 275, 332.
Hawes, C. H., 53n.
Hawes, H., 53n.
Heard, Gerald, 113n, 360n.
Hearwood, Edward, 15n.
Hehn, Victor, 115, 116n.
Herodotus, 112, 113n, 148, 149, 153, 157, 158, 159, 160, 198, 218, 279, 396, 300n, 307n, 317, 363.
Hess, J. J., 212n.
Heuzey, Leon, 295n.
Hilderbrand, R., 116.
Hilprecht, H. V., xv, 37n, 65n. Hilton-Simpson, M. W., see Simpson, H., 109.
Hinke, W. J., 262n.
Hisham, Ibn, see Ibn Hisham Hobley, C. W., 13n.
Hoffman, Georg, 305n.
Hoffman, W. J., 96n.
Hogarth, D. G., 46n.
Hölscher, Gustav, 330n.
Homer, 319.
Hommel, Fritz, 2,3, 56n, 75n, 116n, 134n, 168, 181n, 201, 201n, 204n, 205, 206, 256, 257n, 332,337n.
Honigmann, E., 72n.
Hooke, S. H., 197, 198n.
Hopfner, Theodor, 122n, 164n, 174n, 180n, 182n, 184n, 186n, 187n, 188, 188n.
Hosea, 130, 353f. ; see also Scripture Index.
Hotaneau, A., 19n.
Howitt, A. W., 96n.
Hoyle, R. Birch, 359n.
Hrdlicka, A., 14n.
Hrozny, F., 47, 48n.
Huber, E., 269n.
Humann, C., 82n.
Hurgronje, C. Snouck, 102n, 148n. Hurwitz, S. T. H., 20n.
Hussey, Mary I., 253n, 255n.
Ibn Hisham, 217n.
Ibn Khaldoun, 109.
Isaac of Antioch, 217n, 317.
Isaiah, 333, 354; see also Scripture Index.
Jack, J. W., 330.
Jacut, see Yaqut.
James, William, 357.
Jastrow, Morris, Jr., 7, 129n, 146n, 147n, 152n, 155, 232n, 238n, 267n, 270, 271, 272n.
Jaussen, A., 21 In, 284.
Jensen, P., 141n, 241n, 251n, 266n, 267. Jequier, G., 180n.
Jeremias, A., 155n.
Jerome, St., 191, 217n, 317.
Jespersen, Otto, 28.
Jevons, F. B., 96.
Johannes Lydus, 152, 299, 300n.
Johns, C. H. W., 332n, 339.
Johnston, H. H., 13n.
Jones, Rufus M., 333n.378
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Jordan, Julius, 35n, 57n, 58n.
Josephus, 148, 297.
Jourdan, A., 19n.
Justin, 300n, 306n.
Juvenal, 175.
Keane, A. H., 7, 9.
Keasby, L. M., 95.
Keith, Sir Arthur, 14n, 31, 39,40,41, 79n. King, L. W., 5, 42n, 45n, 49n, 68n, 79n, 237n, 264n, 267n, 272n, 274n. Knudtzon, J. A., 7 ln, 80n, 86n, 88n, 134n, 267n, 283n, 293n, 309n.
Koldeway, R., 82n.
Kremer, Alfred, Freiherr von, 2, 3, 115n. Krencker, Daniel, 320n.
Kretschmer, P., 48n.
Kuenen, A., 323, 337n, 359.
Kügler, F. X., 267.
Lagarde, P., 337n.
Lahache, J., 15n.
Landsberger, (Dr.), 60n, 365.
Lane, E. W., 103n, 138n.
Langdon, S., 31, 36n, 39n, 59n, 60n, 62n, 64n, 66, 67n, 73n, 112n, 234n, 236n, 250n, 253n, 262n, 264n, 266n, 267n, 269n, 270n, 27 ln, 279n.
Laragasse, E. de, 19n.
Layard, H., 79n.
Legrain, Leon, 73n, 79n, 12ßn, 228n, 268n, 269n.
Lepsius, E., 198n.
Letourneau, C., lOln.
Leuba, J. A., 162n.
Lidsbarski, Mark, 137n, 212n, 222n, 296n, 298n, 302n, 304n, 306n, 308n, 309n, 3l0n, 311n, 312n, 314n, 326n. Likhatchef, N. P., xv.
Littmann, Enno, 212n, 22 ln, 222n, 224n. Loret, V., 197n.
Lowie, Robert H., 95.
Lowrie, Walter, 359n.
Lucian, 112, 155, 294, 295, 298, 318, 320. Luckenbill, D. D., 81n, 82n, 263n.
Lüpke, Theodor von, 320n.
Luschan, Felix von, 9, 12n, 14n, 16n, 31, 50n, 82n, 310n.
Lydus, Johannes, see Johannes Lydus.
Macalister, Alexander, 52.
Macalister, R. A. S., 51n, 84, 148n, 149n, 307n, 349n.
Macdonald, D. B., 338n.
Mackay, E., 39, 199n.
Mackenzie, D., 5ln.
Macler, (M.), 317n.
Macridi-Bey, 49n.
Mader, P. E., 51n.
Malinowski, Bronislaw, 110, llln. Mallon, Père, 51.
Mariette, A., 197n.
Marshall, Sir John, 37n, 38n, 60n, 65n, 253n.
Marti, Carl, 131n, 337n.
Martial, 299n.
Maspéro, G., 9, 158.
Masquerey, E., 19n.
Maunier, René, 109.
McCown, T. D., 51.
McLennan, J. F., 95, 98, 101, 110. Meinhoff, Carl, 9, 12, 13n, 14n, 16n, 19, 25n.
Meissner, B., 72n, 77n, 227n, 257n, 259n, 264n, 274n.
Mercer, S. A. B., 165, 259n. Messerschmidt, L., 44, 46n, 79n.
Meyer, Eduard, 79n, 178n, 180n, 318,332. Meyers, John L., 6.
Mill, H. R., 159n.
Milligan, George, 108n.
Möller, Herman, 25n.
Montet, P., 286n, 293n, 294n. Montgomery, J. A., 290n.
Moore, G. F., 131n, 336n.
Morant, S. M.. 14n, 31, 39.
Mordtmann, J. H., 207n, 21 In.
Morgan, J. de, 10,14,15n, 26,27,33,34n, 36n, 38n, 53n, 79n.
Morgenstern, Julian, ix., 341n. Motylinski, A. de C., 19n.
Muir, Sir William, 220n.
Müller, D. H., 136n, 201n, 211n, 221n, 222n, 223.
Müller, Friedrich, 10, 12n, 27.
Müller, W. Max, 9, 10, 19, 149n, 158n, 164.
Musil, Alois, 79n.
Muss-Arnolt, W., 62n, 155n, 289n.INDEX OF AUTHORS
379
Nath, Dr. Pran, 65n.
Naville, E., 164, 174n, 197n.
Nestle, E., 337n.
Neuville, René, 51.
Nielson, Ditlef, 6, 56n, 70n, 72n, 74n, 134n, 136n, 201n, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208n, 209n, 211n, 212n, 213n, 215n, 220n, 241, 332.
Nikolsky, M. V., xv., 268n.
Nôldeke, Th., von, 4, 7, 19n, 105, 130n. Nowack, W., 148n, 157, 332n.
Oehler, G. F., 337n.
Ohnefalsch-Richter, Max, 133, 300n. Olmstead, A. T., 88n, 295n, 327n, 330,
331,	340n, 346.
Osborne, H. F., 14n.
Osiander, E., 56, 200.
Otto, W., 164n.
Ovid, 307n, 319.
Owen, Mary A., 96n.
Palgrave, W. G., 6, 104, 115n, 116n, 117. Paton, L. B., 80n, 87n, 137, 284n, 330,
332,	355n.
Paul, St., 147, 333; see also Scripture Index.
Pausanias, 299, 303n.
Perdizet, Paul, 318n.
Peiser, F. E., 105.
Petermann, A., xvi., 115n, 118n, 147n. Peters, John P., 8.
Petrie, W. F. M., 34, 74, 89, 91, 92, 93, 106n, 158n, 164,174,176,181n, 199n. Philby, H. St. J., 38n.
Philo of Byblos, 286, 292, ff. Philostorgius, 148.
Pietschmann, R., 155n, 294n.
Pinches, Theophilus G., xvi.
Poebel, Arno, 36n, 264n.
Pokornsky, (Dr.), 10.
Polybius, 303n.
Pottier, E., 46n, 60n.
Praetorius, F., 19n.
Price, I. M., 42n.
Puchstein, Otto, 320n.
Pumpelly, R., 34n.
Quibell, J.E.,172n, 199n.
Radau, H., 35,301n.
Randall-Maclver, D., 91n, 109. Rathjens, C., 38n.
Rawlinson, Henry, xvi.
Reclus, E., 56n, 200n, 201.
Reich, Nathaniel, J., ix.
Reinisch, Leo, 19, 2 In, 102n, 106, 148n. Reisner, G. A., 259n, 260n, 262n, 268n. Rhodokanakis, N., 72n, 117n, 134n, 202, 204n,206n,208,209n.
Rhys, J., 26n.
Ripley, William Z., 7, 9, 14n.
Ritter, Carl, 117n.
Rogers, R. W., 35, 68n, 77n.
Rolland, G., 15n.
Ronzevalle, M., 312n.
Rossini, Carlo Conti, 22 In.
Rost, P., 82n.
Rowe, Alan, 188n, 309n.
Rüppell (Herr), 223n.
Rutter, E., 217n, 220.
Sachau, E., 82n, 337n.
Sacy, S., de, 118n.
Samhoudi, 334n.
Sanford, K. S., 89, 90n, 106n.
Sarzec, Ernst de, 36n, 40, 63n, 79n, 248.
Savignac, Père, 85n, 21 In, 284.
Sayce, A. H., 4, 37n, 283n.
Schaeffer, F. A., 45n, 287.
Scharff, Alexander, 10, 89n, 93.
Scheil, V., 36n.
Schenkel, Daniel, 337n.
Schiffer, Sina, 82n.
Schmidt, Erich, 57n.
Schmidt, Nathaniel, 8.
Schnabel, H., 72n.
Schrader, Eberhard, xv., 5, 35n, 82n, 128n, 141n, 143n,337n.
Schrader, Otto, xv.
Schröder, Paul, 81n.
Schuhlein, F., 6.
Schultz, H., 337n.
Seligman, Charles, 14n, 31.
Sellin, E., 326n, 339n.
Sergi, G., 9, 14n, 31, 158n.
Sethe, Kurt, ix., 75,94n, 123n, 124n, 127n, 134n, 135n, 165,166,167,168,169,170,380
INDEX OF AUTHORS
171, 172, 173, 174, 175n, 176n, 178n, 179,180n, 181n, 182n, 184, 185n, 186n, 187n,188n, 189n, 190n,191, 192, 193n, 194,195n, 196n, 197, 198n, 199n.
Sharastani, 148.
Sidersky, D., 309n.
Simpson, H., 109.
Singh, Sadhu Sundar, 333.
Skinner, J., 355n.
Skipwith, G. H., 337n.
Slane, Le Baron de, 109n.
Smend, R., 137n, 222n.
Smith, Elliott, 14n, 31.
Smith, H. P., 131n, 332.
Smith, J. M. P., 353n.
Smith, Sidney, 36n, 37n, 38n, 45n, 69n, 76n, 77, 78n, 274n.
Smith, W. Robertson, 7, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100,101,105,113,116n,120n,122,123, 126n, 129n, 130, 138, 149, 152, 154n, 156, 162, 214n, 215n, 216, 217n, 219, 224n, 301n, 305n, 306n, 307, 323, 337n, 338n, 342n.
Socin, A., 137n, 222n.
Sommer, F., 48n, 50, 367f.
Sozomen, 148.
Spencer, B., 96n, 101, llOn, 112n, 113n.
Speiser, E. A., 35n, 40, 45n, 57n, 58n, 59, 61, 68, 69, 76, 77, 78n, 84, 85n, 86n, 230n, 263n, 365.
Sprenger, A., 4, 5, 28.
Stade, B., 323, 331.
Starbuck, E., 162n.
Starcke, C. N., 101.
Steindorff, G., 23n, 164, 169, 170n, 175, 180n, 195n, 196.
Steuernagle, C., 301n.
Strabo, 109, 149, 158n, 175, 299, 303n.
Strassmaier, J. N., 250n.
Streck, Maximilian, 8.
Stuhlmann, Franz, 109.
Stumme, H., 19n.
Sturtevant, E. T., 47n.
Suys, E., 158n.
Tacitus, 298n, 299n, 300n.
Tallquist, K. L., 25In.
Tchihatahef, (M.), 15n.
T ertullian, 306.
Theodoret, 339.
Theodulus, 342n.
Thomas, Bertram, 38n.
Thompson, R. C., 62, 80n, 141n, 143n, 241n, 315n.
Thureau-Dangin, F., xvi, 251n, 263n, 265n, 279n.
Tiele, C. P., 331.
Trumbull, H. C., 150.
Tseretheli, (Sig.), 36n.
Turville- Petre, F., 51.
Tylor, E. B., 120, 128.
Toy, C. H., 8n, 129n, 144n, 155n, 332n, 334n,338n.
Unger, Eckhard, 60n, 274n.
Vélan, C., 15n.
Venis, Arthur, 37n.
Vergil, 306, 324.
Vincent, Hughes, 52n, 309n.
Virolleaud, C., 287n, 288n, 290n, 291n, 292n, 361.
Vischer, H., 15n.
Vlock, W., 3.
Vogüé, Comte de, 317n, 318n.
Waddell, L. A., 25n, 37n.
Wainwright, G., 199n.
Wahace, A. R., 114.
Walther, J., 15n.
Ward, W. H., 35,127n, 128n, 142n, 228n, 245n, 273n, 332.
Weber, O., 85n, 201n.
Weidner, E. F., 313n.
Weissbach, F. H., 35, 60n.
Welch, A. C., 355n.
Wellhausen, J., 105, 118n, 120n, 130, 149n, 152, 154, 202, 213, 214n, 215n, 216, 217n,323, 359.
Wells ted, J. R., 115n, 117,118,154n. Westermarck, Edward, 98, 101, 113n. Whitney, W. D., 28.
Wiedemann, A., 10, 126n, 127n, 132, 140n, 164,174n.
Wiegand, T., 320n,
Wildeboer, G., 332.
Wilken, G. A., 102n, 103n.
Wilkin, Anthony, 91n, 109n.INDEX OF AUTHORS
381
Wilkinson, G., 198n.
Winckler, Hugo, xv., 43, 45n, 46, 99, 152, 154n, 156, 205, 308n, 325n, 328n, 332.
Winnefeld, Hermann, 320n.
Winstanley, W., 224n.
Wolf, W., 196n.
Woolley, C. L., 31, 34n, 35n, 38n, 39, 40, 46n, 49, 57n, 66, 79n, 128n, 142n, 176, 228n.
Worrell, W. H., 10, 12n, 13n, 14n, 15, 16n, 18n, 2 In, 25n, 29,30,69n.
Wright, W., 3n, 5, 7, 82n.
Wüstenfeld, (Dr.), 334n.
Wylde, A. B., 148n.
Yaqut, 116n, 217n, 218n.
Zimmern, Heinrich, xv., 241n, 256n, 260n, 262n, 264n, 279n, 332.
Zimolong, (M,), 263n.
Zittel, K. A., 15n.
Zwemer, S. M., 56n, 102n, 117n, 118, 129n, 154n, 200n, 201n.INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Aa, Sumerian goddess, 244.
Abirillu, Aramaean deity, 315.
Abraham, 83, 104, 130, 324f., 363.
Abu Sharein, 62.
Abu Sir, 189.
Abydos, 176, 177.
Abyssinia, 1, 221.
Abyssinian Church, 224.
Abyssinians, 16, 29, 130, 221.
Achaeans, 50, 367.
Adab, 62, 235.
Adad, Semitic weather-god, 246, 285. Adda, Amorite god, 285f., 293f.
Adodos, Greek form of Adda, 292. Adonis, 292, 294f., 319. yEgaean civilization, 46.
Afars, 12, 106, 221.
Africa, 9, 16, 55; united to Europe in glacial period, 14.
Aga, Mount, 214.
Agade, a Semitic city, 37.
Ahab, 351.
Ahbiyawa, 367f.
Ahmose I, 106f.
Ain Sitti Miriam, 52.
Akhi-Yami (Akhi-Yawi), 326.
Akhmin, 176.
Akkadian language, 22, 23, 24, 47, 69f., 77, 82, 365.
Akkadians, 1, 16, 29, 61, 68, 69ff., 77, 78;
at Nippur, 64.
Akshak (Opis), 60.
Aksum, 22 If.
Al-Fakhr, Arabian divinity, 208.
Al-Fals, Arabian god, 214, 219. Al-Galsad, Arabian god, 214,219.
Al-Lat, Arabian goddess, 140, 203, 217, 218f., 316.
Al-maqqahu (Almaq-hu; Il-maqqahu), 206f., 222.
Al-Mohads, 109.
Al-Muharriq, Arabian deity, 215.
Al-sa'ir, Arabian deity, 215.
Al-'ur, see El-war.
Al-Uzza, Arabian goddess, 118, 140, 203, 217, 218, 221.
Alashia, ancient name of Cyprus, 299. Alein, Phoenician god, 289f., 361.
Algeria, 151.
Algiers, 91, 109.
Ali, 103.
Allah, 218, 220.
Almoravide, 109.
Ama, Babylonian god, 264. Amageshtinanna, Babylonian deity, 260. Amamutinanna see Amageshtinanna. Amen, Egyptian god, 173, 178, 187. Amenophis I, 106.
Amenophis IV, king of Egypt, 44, 80,107. Amen-re, Egyptian god, 193.
American Indians, 96f.
American School of Oriental Research at Baghdad, 44.
Amharic language, 365.
'Amm, Arabian god, 30, 72, 208, 209ff., 284.
Amman, city in Palestine, 51, 284. Ammi-anshi, 74, 85, 284.
Ammi-bail, 72.
Ammi-ditana, 72.
Ammi-nadab, 72, 284.
Ammi-nadib, 72.
Ammi-zaduga, 72.
Ammonites, 1, 284.
Amon, Egyptian god, 158; see Amen. Amorites, 1, 16, 29, 49, 71ff., 80, 85, 88, 283ff., 308, 320, 326.
Amurru, 362.
\Anat, (Anath), Phoenician goddess, 289f., 302.
Anatolia, 33.
Anaza, Arabian tribe, 215.
Animals, Sacred, 97.
Animals, totems: ass, possible totem, 174; baboon, 191; beetle, 190; bull, 183; cat, 193; cow, 175, 177, 183, 184;
383384
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Animals—continued : dog (jackal), 176, 178f., 180f., 190; eagle (or vulture), 216; fish, sharpnosed, 181; hawk, 172, 173, 174, 177, 178, 180, 181, 184, 186, 189, 191, 193; ibis, 179, 191; ichneumon, 193; jackal see dog; latus-fish, 172; lion, 191, 215f.; okapi, extinct animal, possible totem, 174; oryx, 180; ox, 192; pig, possible totem, 174; ram, 170, 178, 185, 192; serpent, 188, 192, 193, 194; shrew-mouse, 193; vulture, 172.
Animistic stage of religion, 120.
Antaeopolis, 177.
Anu, Babylonian god, 125, 227, 245ff., 369.
Aphek (Aphaca), 295,361.
Aphrodite, a Greek name for Ashtart, 294,298.
Aphroditespolis, 177, 179.
Apollo (Resheph), 319.
Apollonospolis Magna, 172.
Arabia, 4ff, 11, 27ff., 55ff., 200ff.
Arabia, North see North Arabia.
Arabia, South see South Arabia.
Arabia Felix, 56, 201.
Arabic language, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 365f.
Arabs, 1, 16, 55f.
Arafa, 214.
Aramaeans, 1, 16, 81ff., 137, 285, 310ff., 327ff.
Aramaic language, 22, 23, 82f., 365.
Arapkha, 45.
Arar (Larsa), 67.
Arhab, Arabian territory, 216.
Arpachshad, 45.
Arpad (Arvad), 313.
Arrapachitis, 45.
Arsinoite, nome, 182.
Aruru, Babylonian goddess, 141, 227.
Aryans, 44, 47.
Arzawa, 50.
Asharu, Babylonian god, 133, 278.
Ashdar, Babylonian goddess, 65, 136, 205, 226, 228.
Ashdar-muti, king of Kish, 136, 237.
Ashdod, founding of, 361.
Asher, name of Yahweh, 349.
Asher, tribe of, 88, 306, 326.
Asher ah, theories of, 133.
Asherat (Asherah, Ashirat), goddess, 134ff., 138,288f.,306f.,362.
Ashira, Nabathaean deity, 316. Ashnunak, 60.
Ashtar, 136, 288f., 319.
Ashtar-Chemosh, 309f.
Ashtaroth, 307.
Ashtart, 29, 137, 297f.; in Cyprus, 299f. Ashtoreth, 137, 306f.
Ashur, (city), 37f.; Sumerian art at, 37, 77, 78; original name, 76; Sumerian names, 76.
Ashur, god, 134ff., 138, 274f., 340.
Asia Minor, 46,48,49,54,367f.
Asiatic race see Central Asiatic race.
Ass, possible totem, 174.
Assuan, 170.
Assyria, 43, 57, 76, 274f.
Assyrian language, 22,23,24,77,365. Assyrians, 1,16,17ff., 76ff.
Astar, Abyssinian god, 223.
Astarte, 292, 294; see also Ashtart.
Atar, Aramaean goddess, 137, 313, 315, 318f.
Atargatis, 318f.
Atarkhasis, myth of Ea and, 262. Atarquruma (Atar Qarnaim), 315. Atarsamain, 315.
Atef-tree, 179.
Athirat, goddess, 134, 138, 205, 209, 217. Athlit, near Mt. Carmel, 51.
9Athr (Athir), an epithet, 133,138, 200. Athribis, 189.
Athtar, Arabian god, 29, 136, 138, 202, 203, 204ff; 207, 208f., 212, 217.
Athtar, Arabian goddess, 209f.
Athtar, epithet, 136, 200, 204ff., 207, 208f. Atreus, 50, 367.
Attis, Phrygian god, 318.
Atum, Egyptian god, 190.
A-usar, early name of Ashur, 76, 275. Australia, 96f.
Awa see Yeha.
Awan, 61.
Baal, Yahwehization of, 348f. Baal-Hamon, 303, 304.INDEX OF SUBJECTS
385
Baal-Khammam, Aramaean god, 310. Ba'al-land, 138.
Baal-Semed, Aramaean god, 310. Baal-Shamaim, 293, 314, 320. Baal-tamar, 131.
Baalat, Phoenician goddess, 283; at Gebal, 293f.
Baalbek, 320.
Baals, 307.
Babbar see Utu.
Bab-el-Mandeb, Straits of, 27, 57. Baboon, totem, 179, 191.
Babylon, a Semitic city, 37, 67, 239, 27If. Babylonia, 35ff., 55, 57, 69fL, 226ff.,and passim.
Babylonians, 57, 226ÍJ., and passim. Badari, 89.
Badarian civilization, 89f., 12 If.
Bakhdet, Egyptian city of U.E., 171. Balish (or Palish), 48.
Baltic, German shores of, 151.
Bantu languages, 13.
Banu Baulan, 214.
Banu Tamin, 215.
Bar-Hadad, see Ben-Hadad.
Bar-Rekub, 3Ilf.
Barras, Abyssinian weather-god, 223. Bast, Egyptian goddess, 193, 198.
Bau, Babylonian goddess, 139, 255. Bedauye, 12, 22, 23, 24, 221, 365. Beewa-marriage, see Marriage, beena. Beetle, totem, 190.
Bekhdet, 2nd L. E. nome, 184.
Bekhdet, 17th L. E. nome, 192.
Belearic Isles, 151.
Belin, 12, 21, 22, 23, 24.
Beluchistan, 59.
Ben-Hadad, king of Damascus, 314. Benjamin, tribe of, 131.
Berbers, 1, 109.
Berossos, 129.
Beth-shan, 309.
Beth-Shemesh, 309.
Bi-literal roots, 18ff.
Billa, Tell see Tell Billa.
Bné Israel, 87.
Boghaz Koi, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49. Boomerang-god, 254.
Borsippa, 67, 273f.
Brachiocephals, 3If., 34, 53.
British Isles, 151.
Broad-headed men, 3 If.
Bronze Age, 52.
Bubastis, 193, 198.
Bulgaria, 151.
Bull, totem, 183.
Burnaburiash II, 80.
Busiris, 189.
Buto, 6th L. E. nome, 186, 187.
Buto, 18th L. E. nome, 192, 193.
Calendar, Assyrian, 77, 79.
Canaanites, 1,16, 80f., 283, 285ff., 307. Cannabalism, in Egypt, 199.
Carchemish, 33, 43, 46, 49, 50.
Carthage, 16, 17, 303f.
Cat, totem, 193.
Caucasian languages and Sumerian, 36. Caucasus, The, 151.
Causative-reflexive stems, 24, 366. Causative stems, 22f., 365f. Cave-dwellers, 286.
Cave-men, 5 If.
Cave-temple, 5If.
Celtic languages, 47.
Central Asia, 34, 48, 58; peoples from, 34, 60, 69, 228, 229.
Central Asiatic race, 59, 61f., 63, 65, 66, 68, 70, 77, 78, 79, 80, 87, 93, 228ff., 256f., 263, 272,369.
Chaldaeans, 82,83.
Chalice-ware, 59.
Chamir, 12, 21, 22, 24, 221.
Chastity, sacrifice of, 113, 153f. Chemosh, 136, 222, 309f.
Cherubim, explanation of, 128.
China, 48, 369.
Chois, 186, 187.
Circumcision, 77,147f., 343f., 368; among Hebrews, 147; among Arabs, 148f.; among Egyptians, 149; originally preparation for marriage, 149f.; circumcision-festival, 148, 153; festival of, among Hamites, 157f.; early Hamito-Semitic custom, 159.
Clans, 95ff.; matrilineal, 95ff.; patrilineal, 95ff.; Hamito-Semitic similar, 159f.386
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Code: Assyrian, 77; Deuteronomic, 356; Hammurabi code, 264; Hittite code, 368; of Holiness, 356.
Confucius, 328.
Copper, 58.
Coptic language, 21, 22, 365.
Copts, 1, 11.
Coran, 99,316; see also Scripture Index.
Corsica, 151.
Covenant, Book of, 340, 352, 355.
Cow, totem, 176, 177, 183, 184.
Cradle-land, Hamitic, 9ff.; 55; African continent theory, 9; North African theory, 9f., 16; Semitic theory of, lOf.
Cradle-land, Semitic, 2ff.; Babylonian theory of, 2ff.; Arabian theory of, 4ff., 11, 27f.; African theory of, 6ff.; Armenian theory of, 8; Amurru theory of, 8f.; South Arabia, first separate home, 28f.; North Semitic, 211.
Craniology, 30f.
Cretan hieroglyphs, 38.
Cretans, 52ff.
Crete, 52ff.
Crimea, The, 151.
Crocodilopolis, 182.
Cromlechs, 51.
Cross, Abyssinian feast of, 224.
Cusae, 178.
Cutha see Kutha.
Cyprus, 133, 298f.
Dagan, Phoenician corn-god, 291.
Dai, Nabathaean diety, 315.
Damascus, 82, 83, 314.
Dan, tribe of, 88.
Danaoi, 54.
Dankalis, 106.
Dankils (Afars), 221.
Date palm, 56, 115f.; found from Canaries to Penjab, 115; Semitic name for, 115n5; importance to Arabs, 116ff.; cultivation of, 117f.; bi-sexual tree, 117f., 128,140,143f.; in Pyramid Texts, 127; in Babylonian pictures, 128; worshipped in ancient times, 130£f.; in oases, 138; economic importance of, 138; importance to oasis-dwellers, 161f.; tree of life, 142; palm-tree god,
Date palm—continued:
158; palm-tree cult, 195; palm at Nakhla, 217.
Dates, 116£f.; staple article of Arabian diet, 116ff.; dishes made from, 117; Mohammed’s estimate of, 118. Decalogue, 341f.; of J, 341; of E, 352. Deborah, 130.
Dead, spirits of, 121.
Dendereh, 175, 179.
Descent, how reckoned, 95ff., 108. Dheqa, 185.
Dhu-Gabat (Dhu-Gibt), Arabian god,
212.
Dhu-'l-Khalasa, Arabian diety, 213. Dhu-'l-Shara, Arabian god, 214, 217. Dido, 305f.
Dilmun, island of, 239.
Diospolis Parva, 175.
Dog (jackal) totem, 176,178f., 180f., 190. Dolichocephals, 3If., 53.
Dolmens, 51.
Doves, sacred, 217, 218.
Drehem, Babylonian city, 255.
Duka, 177.
Dumuzi, Babylonian god, 240ff. D^m-animal, 253n8.
Dun-mush (?), Babylonian deity, 254; see also Dunshagga.
Dun-pa-e, Babylonian deity, 254; see also Dunshagga.
Dunshagga, Babylonian deity, 253f. Dunshaggana, see Dunshagga.
Dusares; see Dhu-'l-Shara.
Dushratta, king of Mitanni, 44, 45. Dw$mwtf, (Egyptian god), 124.
Dw$w, (Egyptian tadpole-god), 124.
Ea, Babylonian god, 129, 233, 262; see also Enki.
Eabani, Akkadian of Enkidu’s name, 145f.
Eagle (or vulture), totem, 216. Eannatum, king of Lagash, 34, 41, 228, and passim; conquers Elam, 34. Ebed-Ashera, 88.
Economic life, 114ff., 169.
E Document, 71, 324, 325, 340.
Edom, 315.INDEX OF SUBJECTS
387
Edomites, 1.
Edfu, 172.
Egypt, 53, 55, 57, 87f., 164fi.; Elamite influence in, 34.
Egyptian language, 21, 22, 23, 25, 94, 108, 365, 368.
Egyptians, 1, 11, 14, 8911., 164ff.
Ehnas (Heracleopolis), 94. Eileithyiaspolis, 172.
El, Amorite and Phoenician god, 286ff., 307ff., 310,311,313,325f., 363.
El, South Arabian god, 225.
El-Amarna, 86.
El-Amarna Letters, 86, and passim.
El Ely on, 308.
El Kab, 172.
El-Obeid, 227.
El Olam, 308.
El Ro’i, 308.
El Shaddai, 308.
El-Ula, 85, 211.
El-war, god of Hamath, 314.
Elagu, goddess of Elam, 273.
Elah, 325.
Elam, 33f., 43,55, 58, 59, 68, 92, 273. Elamites, 33f., 93; influence in Egypt, 34. Elat, 288.
Elephantine, 170.
Elijah, 351f.
Elim, 131.
Elohim, 325.
Elyon, Aramaean deity, 313.
Emiuenshi, 74, 85.
Emutbal, 68.
Enbi-Ashdar, king of Kish, 70, 136, 237. Enki, Babylonian god, 125, 139, 228f., 232f.
Enkhegal, king of Lagash, 41.
Enkidu, Babylonian hero, 141; see also Eabani.
En-lil, god of Asiatic race, 64, 125, 139, 228f., 369.
Ennin, (Ininna), Sumerian name of Ishtar, 64,237.
Eninnu, temple at Lagash, 255 and passim.
Enshagkushana, 237.
En-shar, Babylonian god, 125.
Entemena, 230ff.
Enzu, Asiatic moon-god, 241ff.
Erech, 57,58, 59,65,67,226ff.
Ereshkigal, Babylonian goddess, 266f.
Eridu, 62, 66, 228f.
Erim, part of Lagash, 64, 260.
Ernutet, mistress of granary, 198.
Eryx, 303.
Eshmun, 292, 302.
Ethiopic language, 24, 365f.
Euphrates, 61, 230.
Euyuk, 49.
Exodus, Hebrew, date of, 329ff.
Eye, 107.
Ezana, king of Aksum, 222f.
Ezra, 356.
Fakhr, Arabian divinity, 208.
Family, 95ff.; organization of, 141.
Fara (Surippak), 57, 60, 125.
Fatima, 103.
Fayum, 89, 182.
Feasts see festivals.
Festivals, religious, 151f.; among Hebrews, 151f.; in Cyprus, 152; in Babylonia, 152; in Arabia, 152; circumcision-festivals, 153; spring-festival, 153; to palm-tree goddess, 154; Christianized in Abyssinia, 154f.; to Tam-muz in Babylonia, 155; to Adonis in Phoenicia, 155f.; two festivals primitive, 157f.; sexual laxity at, 160f.; Egyptian, of Opet, 196; of Osiris, 197f.; Sed-festival, 198; at Mecca, 221; in Abyssinia, 224; New Year’s festival in time of Gudea, 277f.; at Babylon in time of Nebuchadrezzar, 279f.; West Semitic, 320ff.
Fish, sharp-nosed, totem, 181.
Fishing, 114, 169.
France, 151.
Fruits of Yemen, 56.
Ful language, 12, 23, 24.
Fusion of races, 33f.
Gad, tribe of, 88, 327f.
Gal-alim, Babylonian deity, 252f.
Galla, 12, 365 (Gallas, 157).
Gatumdug, Babylonian goddess, 25If.
Gawra, Tepe, see Tepe Gawra.388
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Geb, Egyptian earth god, 140.
Gebal, 2850.
Ge'ez script, 221, 222.
Genders in Hamitic and Semitic, 25. German shores of the Baltic, 151. Gershom, son of Moses, 147.
Geshtinanna see Amageshtinanna.
Gezer, 51, 52, 84, 307.
Ghabghab, 217.
Gideon, 130.
Gihon, 52.
Gilgals, 51, 150, 368.
Gilgamesh epic, 141, 143, 226.
Girsu, a part of Lagash, 63, 248f. Gishkhu (Unrnia), 61, 67, 260.
Glacial epoch, 14, 55.
Gods, 1230.; developed from spirits, 123; Babylonian, number of, 125f.; of animal form, human with animal heads, 132, 195; Egyptian, chthonic, 132; later celestial, 132; of love, 161f.; Arabian, theories of, 202f.
Gournia, 53.
Grain-spirit, 262.
Graeco-Latin, 47.
Greeks, 47, 50, 367f.
Gudea, Babylonian ruler, 42, 112, 134, 139, and passim; 23 If., and passim. Gugishkha, 61.
Gula, epithet of Bau, 250.
Guti, dynasty of, 42, 68, 69, 77.
Habiri, 83, 86ff., 327f.
Hadad, Aramaean god, 31 Iff., 313, 315, 319.
Hadramaut, 56f., 214.
Hadrian, 56.
Hagia Triada, 53.
Hamath, 314.
Hamdan, Arabian tribe, 216.
Hamite, 1.
Hamites, 9If., 105f.
Hamitic languages, 12ff., 365f.
Hamitic peoples, llff., 27; of the white race, 14; migrated to Arabia, 55. Hammurabi, 42, 43, 72, 79, 259 and passim.
Hamon (Hammon), 295f.
Hamrin, Jebel, 33, 43.
Hapi, Egyptian Nile god, 140.
Haran, 82.
Harappa, India, 37, 59, 65.
Harem, of temple, 158.
Hathor, 168,175,176, 179, 184, 185, 283, 286; meaning of the name, 168,175. Hat-shep-sut, 107, 174.
Hausa, 24, 365.
Hawk, totem, 172,173,174, 177,178,180, 181,184,186,189,191,193.
Hebrew language, 22, 23, 74, 75, 81, 365. Hebrews, 1, 16, 29, 83ff., 323ff.
Hejaz, 55, 92.
Heliopolis (On), 126, 127, 190. Herakleopolis, 182.
Hermopolis, 179.
Hermes, 179, 296.
Hezekiah, 354.
Hieraconpolis, 94.
Hierapolis see Mabug.
Hierodule see Q'desha.
Himas, tracts sacred to deities, 154. Hittite city, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50.
Hittite hieroglyphs, 37f., 46.
Hittite language, 28, 47, 49.
Hittites, 44,46,49, 50, 85ff., 311f., 368. Hmn, (Egyptian god), 123.
Holiness, code of, 356.
Horeb, location of, 334.
Horites, 84.
Horus, 124, 167, 171, 177, 178, 180, 184, 191, 196.
Hypsele, 178.
Hpy, (Apis), 124.
Hubal, (Hobal), Arabian god, 217, 220, 316.
Hunting, 114ff., 169,171.
Hurri, 43ff., 54,84,86,87,3 Ilf.
Hurri language, 48f.
Hyksos, 49.
Ibi-Sin, king of Ur, 73.
Ibis, totem, 179, 191.
Ichneumon, totem, 193.
Idalion (Adil), 300. lD-KIB-NUNki, 61.
Ilah (II), as deity, 212, 213.
Ilat (Ilahat), as deity, 212, 213.INDEX OF SUBJECTS
389
Iliabrat, Akkadian name of Ninshakh, 265.
Ilu, Babylonian form of El, 225.
India, 151.
Indo-European languages, 47, 48.
Indra, 44.
Indus Valley, 59, 60, 65.
Ininni, {see also Ennin), 237.
Intensive stems, 2If.
Ionians, 50.
Irob-Saho, 12, 22, 23.
Iron Age, 54.
Isaac, 325.
Ishtar, 29, 65, 136, 205, 226, 311; etymology of, 137f., 228, 237ff.
Ishtar of Arbela, 276.
Ishtar of Ninevah, 276f.
Isis, 133, 134f., 185, 189, 195.
Israel, sons of, 87.
Issachar, tribe of, 87.
Issesi, Egyptian king, 179.
Italy, Southern, 151.
Jackal, totem, see dog, totem.
Jacob, 86f., 325.
Japan, 151.
J Document, 71,105,141, 282,324,340f., 356.
Jehu, 351.
Jemdet Nasr, 57, 59, 60, 62, 66, 67. Jeremiah, 333, 355f.; see also Scripture Index.
Jericho, city of palm trees, 131. Jerusalem, 52, 56, 361.
Jesus, 328.
Jesus, in the Coran, 130.
Jethro, 334.
Jezebel, 351.
Jinn, 120, 129.
Jonathan, grandson of Moses, 347, 349. Joseph, 104.
Josiah, 355.
Judah, tribe of, 87, 131.
Juno, 319.
Jus primae metis, 110.
Kaaba, 217f., 220.
Kabasos, 189.
Kabylee language, 22, 24, 365.
Kabylees, 11.
Kad’ah, a deity, 313.
Kadesh, (Qadesh), 362.
Kafa, 112.
Kaldu, Chaldaeans, 82, 83.
Kanish, 47, 48, 49.
Kassites (Kossseans), 80f.
KbtJmwj (Egyptian god), 124.
Kenites, 331 ff.
Kethek, 312.
Kha, Sumerian word for ‘fish*, 62. Khallab, Babylonian city, 237f.
Kharga, oasis, 176.
Khnum, Egyptian god, 158, 170, 178. Khreitun, Wady, in Judaea, 51.
Khulan, 216.
Kinda, Arabic tribe, 214.
Kinship, 97ff.
Kirkuk, 44.
Kish, 67, 237, 263f.; skulls found at, 39f. Kisurra, 67.
Kitab al-Aghani, 99.
Kition (Kiti), 300.
Knossos, 53.
Kom Ombos, 171.
Koptos, 172.
Kossaeans, 68, 69, 80f.
Kouyunjik, 33, 43.
Krlzr (Krfcrw), 123.
Kupna, early name of Gebal, 286. Kurigalzu II, 80.
Kutha, Sumerian control of, 37, 67, 266.
Lagash, 34,42,61,63,100,228,240,247ff. Lamassu, a guardian deity, 252.
Lao-tse, 328.
Larak, 60.
Larnax Lapethos, 302.
Larsa, 34, 67, 68, 244.
Lasa, a goddess, 313.
Latopolis, 172.
Latus-fish, totem, 172.
Laws, Assyrian, 77.
Leah, 86f.
Leah tribes, 86f.
Lesbos, 367.
Letopolis, 184.
Levi, tribe of, 87, 346f.
Levirate, 101, 368.390
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Libyans, 91.
Likhyan, 212.
Likhyanians, 212.
Linguistic kinship of Hamitic and Semitic, 17ff.
Lion, totem, 191, 215f.
Long-headed men, 3 If.
Love, different conceptions of in connection with deities, 162.
Lower Egypt, 94, 166, 183ff.
Lugal-Erim, Babylonian deity, 260f. Lugalzaggisi, king of Erech, 242, and passim.
Lulubi, 68, 276.
Luyyish, 48, 50.
Lybians, 1.
Lycaonia, 48, 50.
Lycia, 48.
Lycopolis, 178.
Ma'abde, 178.
Mabug (Hierapolis), 318f.
Magic, 112, 121; to influence gods of fertility, 112; relation to religion, 113n3. Main, 56f., 201, 204, 316.
Malak-Ashtart, 295f., 310.
Malkatu, Akkadian name of Aa, 244. Malta, 151, 302.
Manaf, Arabian god, 214.
Manasseh, king of Judah, 354f.
Manat, Arabian goddess, 218, 316. Manda language, 48f.
Mandæans, 105.
Manishtusu, king of Kish, 34, 70, 79, 244f.; conquers Elam, 34.
Manuthu, Aramaean goddess, 316.
Maoris, 140.
Marash, 46.
Marduk, god of Babylon, 27If., 313. Mari, 68.
Marriage, 98ff.; beena, 101, 141; mot’a, 101f., 141; monogamous, 111.
Mary, Virgin, Mohammedan tradition of, 130.
Masai, 12, 22, 24, 366.
Mascal, Abyssinian festival of the Cross, 154, 224.
Masseba, 150f., 222,300,369.
Matriarchy, 111.
Matrilineal, 95ff., 108ff.
Mattiuaza, king of Mitanni, 44. Mauretania, 109.
Mblunge, 12.
Mecca, 102, 217, 218, 220. Mediterranean race, 14ff., 53.
Medr, Abyssinian earth goddess, 223. Meeting, Tent of, 344f., 369.
Mehri language, 365.
Mekal, a god, 301, 309.
Melanesians, 110.
Melek, Nabathaean god, 316.
Melqart, god of Tyre, 296f.
Memphis, 94, 166, 183f.
Mena, king of Egypt, 94, 184, 198. Mendes, 192.
Menhirs, 51, 151, 368.
Meni, Hebrew deity, 327.
Menkure, Egyptian king, 286.
Mercury, 296.
Merneptah, king of Egypt, 87, 329. Mesha, king of Moab, 222, 309f. Mes-kalam-dim, prehistoric king of Ur, 41. Metelis, 187.
Midianite-Kenites, 87f., 331.
Min, Egyptian god, 174, 176, 183. Minaean language, 365, 367.
Minaeans, 70, 204, 215, 366. Minet-el-Beida, 287; see also Ras Shamra. Minoans, 53, 54.
Mira, 50.
Mitanni, 43ff., 47, 49, 86, 87.
Mitra, 44.
Moab, 137, 222, 309f.
Moabites, 1, 309.
Mocha, 102.
Mohammed, 100, 103, 118, 215, 219f., 328, 333.
Mohenjo-daro, India, 37, 59, 60, 65. Mongolians, 47, 48.
Monotheism, 353f.
Mont, Egyptian god, 172.
Morocco, 151.
Moses, 87, 147, 328ff., 369; nature of his work, 329; work something new, 331; his date, 331; his vision of Yahweh, 333; mediates covenant with Yahweh, 335; his understanding of Yahweh’s demands, 340; is circumcised, 343f.INDEX OF SUBJECTS
391
Mo?a, marriage see Marriage, mo?a. Moth, Phoenician god of death, 29If. Mu’allakat poems, 102f.
Mugharah, Wady el-, in Galilee, 51. Muwatallis, 47.
Mycenae, 54.
Nabathseans, 82, 214, 217, 315f.
Nabu, Babylonian god, 273f., 313.
Nahi, Arabian deity, 213.
Nakar, a deity, 313.
Nakhla, 118, 217.
Nakrakh, Arabian goddess, 204ff.
Nama, 12, 22, 24, 365f.
Nana, (.see also Ennin), 237.
Nandi, 12.
Nannar, Sumerian moon-god, 241ff. Nanshe, scribal error for namasse, 256. Napthali, tribe of, 88.
Nar, fire-god, 313.
Naram-Sin, 34, 70,79; conquers Elam, 34. Nasamones, ancient Berber tribe, 158. Nasbeh, Tell en-, 52.
Nasr, Arabian deity, 212, 215, 216; see also Nusur.
Neanderthal man, 84.
Nehemiah, 356.
Neith, Egyptian goddess, 172, 185.
Nejd, 29, 55.
Nekhbet, 172.
Neolithic man, 3 If.
Nepri, Egyptian grain-god, 198.
Nerab, 313f.
Nergal (see also Neunugal), 313, 326. Neunugal, Babylonian god, 266f.
New Guinea, 110.
New Jerusalem, conceptions of, 145n2. Nidaba see Nisaba.
Nikal, a deity, 313, 314.
Nile River, 126, 164.
Nile Valley, 89f., 194.
Nippur, 64f., 228, 229.
Nina, Babylonian goddess, 256f.
Nina (city), 63, 256.
Nineveh, 33, 43, 58, 63.
Ningirsu, deity of Lagash, 139, 247ff. Ningishzeda, Babylonian deity, 255. Nin-IB, 269f., 309.
Ninkhursag, Sumerian goddess, 227, 228, 234ff., 240.
Ninlil, Babylonian goddess, 139,230f. Ninmar, Babylonian goddess, 258f. Ninshakh, Babylonian swine-god, 265f. Ninshar, 268.
Ninshubur see Ninshakh.
Ninsun, Babylonian goddess, 268f. Nintud, Babylonian goddess, 139. Nin-urash see Nin-urta.
Nin-urta, 269f.
Nisaba, Babylonian goddess, 261f. Nomes, Egyptian, 93, 97,165ff.; of Upper Egypt, 1, 170; 2, 171; 3, 172; 4, 173; 5, 173f.; 6,175; 7, 175f.; 8,176; 9,177; 10, 177; 11, 177f.; 12, 178; 13, 178f.; 14, 179; 15, 179; 16, 180; 17, 180f.; 18, 181; 19, 181, 20, 181f.; 21, 182; 22, 183; of Lower Egypt; 1, 183f.; 2, 184; 3, 184f.; 4, 185; 5, 185f.; 6, 186L; 7, 187f.; 8, 188f.; 9, 189; 10, 189; 11, 189; 12, 189f.; 13, 190; 14, 191; 15, 191; 16, 191f.; 17, 192; 18, 192f.; 19, 193; 20, 193f.
Norobo, 12.
North Arabia, 98f.
Nosb see Masseba.
Nose, “Roman”, 79.
Nuhm, Arabian deity, 213.
Numerals, 30.
nun, Asiatic word for ‘fish’, 62, 63,369. NuNki, oldest name of Eridu, 62.
Nusku, Babylonian fire-god, 270f.
Nusur (eagles), Arabian divinities, 208. Nut, Egyptian goddess, 127.
Nuzi, 45, 54, 76.
Oannes (Ea), 129.
Oases, Arabian, 56, 138, 143.
Obeid, Tell-el-, 34; 228; skulls from, 39f.;
pottery from, 57,58,226f.
Okapi, extinct animal, possible totem, 174.
Olives, Mt. of, 52.
Oman, 38, 66, 227.
Ombos, 174.
On (Heliopolis), 126, 127, 190.
Onuris, Egyptian god, 176, 190.
Opet festival, 198.392
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Opis, 60, 61.
Oryx, totem, 180.
Osiris, 124, 133, 182, 189, 193, 195, 203. Osiris festival, 197f.
Ox, totem, 192.
Palaeolithic man, 26ff., 3If., 55, 89f. Palaikastro, 53.
Palestine, 49,50, 51, 71, 75,84, 86,151. Palish (or Balish), 48, 366.
Palm tree see Date palm.
Palmyra, 82, 319.
Panammu, 3Ilf.
Paphos, 298f.
Paradise, in Pyramid Texts, 127, 198f.;
in J document, 141; situation of, 142nl. Patrilineal, 95ff., 108ff.
P Document, 105, 282,308,324,342, 356. Pekin-man, 32nl.
Pelusium, 193.
Pepi, Egyptian king, 127, 198.
Pepi I, Egyptian king, 183, 286.
Pepi II, Egyptian king, 286.
Persia, 38, 59, 151.
Persian, 22.
Petra, 82, 214, 316.
Phaestos, 53.
Phallus of stone circumcised, 77. Philistines, 54, 81.
Phoenicia, 45, 285ff.
Phoenicians, 1, 16, 81, 137, 283ff.
Piankhi, king of Nubia, 183.
Pig, possible totem, 174.
“Pillars”, 150f., 307.
Pitassa, 50.
Pitum, 188.
Polarity, 21.
Polyandry, 96; nair type, 98, 113; Thibetan type, 98, 99f.; in Babylonia, 100; fraternal, 113; in Egypt, according to Maspero, 158.
Polygamy, 103.
Pottery: an ancient type in Mesopotamia and Elam, 33f.; 57f.; stone-age pottery in Palestine, 5If.; pottery in Mesopotamia, 58ff.; in Egypt, 91f.
Portugal, 151.
Prehistory in Egypt, 9If. Pressure-articulation, 17.
Pronouns, 21.
Prophets, of Israel, 162.
Proto-Hittite, 48, 49.
Ptah, Egyptian god, 183f., 198. Ptahhetep, 179.
Punt, 1.
Put (Punt), 1.
Pyramid Texts, 123, 124ff., 127, 174, 186, 195,199.
Qadesh, 362.
Qais, Arabian god, 316. Qarath-khadasht, town in Cyprus, 300f. Qataban, 56f., 201, 208f.
Qatabanians, 72, 73, 75, 208f.
Qatar, 104.
Qedesha (Qedeshoth), 160, 226, 290, 363f., 369.
Quaternary Age, 14, 15, 27.
Quraish, Arabian tribe, 214, 215.
Rabi, Arabian tribe, 215.
Rachel tribes, 87, 327f.
Ragab-festival, 152f., 154.
Rahman, Aramaean god, 317.
Raidhan, (Saba and), 56f., 221. Rakab-El, Aramaean god, 310, 311.
Ram, totem, 170, 178, 185, 192. Ramadhan, 219.
Ramman, another name of Adad, 247. Ramses II, 47, 189, 329.
Ras Shamra, 45, 287ff., 320, 361, 364, 366f., 369.
Re, Egyptian god, 187, 190.
Red Sea, 92.
R’edames, 22, 365.
Reflexive-passive stems, 23ff.
Religious origins, 120-163.
Resheph, 292, 302, 311, 319.
Reuben, tribe of, 87.
Rib-Adda, 86.
Riffs, 11.
Rimmon, 315; see also Hadad.
Rimush, king of Kish, 34, 70; conquers Elam, 34.
“Roman” nose, 79.
Roots, Semitic and Hamitic, 18ff. Round-headed, 46.
Rudha, Arabian deity, 213.INDEX OF SUBJECTS
393
Ruhat, place in Arabia, 215.
Ruldaiu, Nabathaean deity, 315.
Saba, 56f., 75, 201, 207, 221, 222, 316. Sabaean language, 365.
Sabaeans, 148, 206ff., 222.
Sacrifice, 278f., 282, 342n2, 345.
Sa'd, Arabian deity, 215.
Safa (Safaite), 213.
Safar-festival, 154.
Sahar, moon-god, 205; see also Sin, moon-god.
Sahara Desert, 11,12,15,16, 92,106,194;
once well watered, 15f.
Saho, 12, 365.
Sais, 186.
Sakje-Geuze, 49.
Salem, poetical name of Jerusalem, 361. Salm, Nabathaean deity, 316.
Sanskrit, 22.
Sanskrit language, 28.
Sarah, 104.
Sardinia, 151.
Sargon of Agade, 34, 42, 70, 71, 77;
conquers Elam, 34.
Sargon, king of Assyria, 50.
Scandinavia, 151.
Sealand of Arabia, 225.
Sea Lands (Sealands), 82, 225, 310, 325n3.
Seals, Indian, 37; writing on, 37f., 60nl;
cylinder, 59.
Sebennytos, 189f.
Sed-festival, 198.
Sefire, 312.
Semite, 1.
Semites, 26£f., 60S., 65f., 123; invade Nile valley, 26f.; not totemistic, 123; see also Semitic peoples.
Semitic languages, 13ff., 29, 365f.
Semitic peoples, 2fT., 16ff.; Northern, 69; Southern, 69.
Sendjirli, 46,50; see also Zendjirli.
Senit, Egyptian city, 172.
Sequence dates, 92f.
Serabit el-khadem, 283.
Serapis, 124.
Serpent, totem, 188, 192, 193, 194.
Set, animal, 174.
Set, Egyptian god, 171,174,177,178,181, 194, 195.
Sex, dawn of knowledge of, 142.
Shamash, Akkadian sun-god, 244f.
Shams, Arabian sun-goddess, 202, 207, 209, 215.
Shargali-sharri, 70.
Shemesh, Aramaean god, 309, 3Ilf., 313, 314, 320, 328.
Shepesh, Phoenician sun-goddess, 290f. Shilkh language, 23, 24, 366.
Shilkhs, 11.
Shingala, Nabathaean deity, 316. Shrew-mouse, totem, 193.
Shulgi, Babylonian king, 255 and passim. Shuqbahin Samaria, 51.
Shushinak (Susa), 60.
Sibs, 95ff.
Sicilians, 54.
Sicily, 303.
Sile, 191.
Simeon, tribe of, 87.
Sin, Semitic moon-god, 202, 205; in Babylonia, 241f., 313.
Singara, 63.
Sinuhe, tale of, 74, 75, 284.
Sippar, 61, 244, 257.
Sirara, a kind of fish, 256.
Siut, 178.
Skulls, 30ff., 39f.
Slavic languages, 47.
Sobek, 182, 185.
Social life, 95f.
Sodomites, 301.
Solomon, temple of, 131.
Somali land, 1, 12, 22.
Sopdu, Egyptian god, 193.
Soqotri language, 365.
South Arabia, 56ff., 70,73, 75,85,98,102, 200, 366; distributing point of Semitic peoples, 29f., 56f., 70f., 74.
South Arabians, 56ff., 70.
South Arabic, 70.
Spain, 151.
Spdw (Egyptian god; same as Sopdu), 124. Spirits, 120; early belief in, 120; individualized, 120ff.; of dead, 121; gods developed out of, 123f.; number in Babylonia, 125f.394
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Springs, spirits of, 126; in Arabia, 147. Strata in mounds, 58.
Stratonica, Seleucid queen, 318.
Stone Age: at Susa, 33, 77; men of, in Palestine, 50 fF.; near Amman, 51; at Gezer, 5If.; in Crete, 52ff.
Su’air, 215.
Subbiluliuma, 49.
Succoth, 188.
Sumer, 63.
Sumerian and Caucasian languages, 36. Sumerian language, 36, 47, 66.
Sumerian syllabary, 66f.
Sumerians, 35fL, 61, 65f., 68, 227f.; entered Babylonia from the south, 36; not from India, 37; possibly from Oman or Persia, 38; skulls of, 39f.; early king of, 41; dynasty of at Ur, 41; at Lagash, 41f.; third dynasty of at Ur, 42; leaders of civilization, 43; Girsu a Sumerian city, 63f.; deities of, 234ff.; 247ff. Sun-god, Babylonian, 24311.
Surippak (Fara), 57,125,128, 369.
Susa, 33, 43, 58, 60.
Suwa, Arabian deity, 215.
Sycamore, sacred tree in Egypt, 130. Syllabary, Sumerian, 66f.
Sypilus, Mount, 46.
Syria, 49.
Syriac dialect, 366.
Taanach, 326f.
Tabala, south of Mecca, 213.
Tabnith, king of Sidon, 104.
Taif, place in Arabia, 218.
Taiyi, Arabian tribe, 214.
Talmud, Babylonian, 82.
Tamar, daughter-in-law of Judah, 131. Tamar (David’s daughter), 104. Tamesheq, 11, 22, 24, 365f.
Tanis, 193.
Tanith, Carthaginean goddess, 304f. Tarkalan, 44.
Tarters, 48.
Tashmit, Babylonian goddess, 274, 313. Teima, 316.
Tell Billa, 45, 46, 59.
Tell-el-Dhiyab, 33, 43.
Temples, Babylonian, 277f.
Tenses of Hamito-Semitic verbs, 24f. Tepe Gawra, 57, 58, 59, 76, 77.
Terebinth, sacred tree, 130.
Teshub, Hittite god, 318.
Teti, Egyptian king, 286.
Thamud (Thamudic), 212f.
Thoth, Egyptian god, 179,191.
Thothmes 1,106.
Thothmes II, 107.
Thothmes III, 44, 80,107.
Threshold, sacred, 150.
Tiglath-pileser III, 82.
Tigre dialect, 365.
Tigrena dialect, 365.
Tigris River, 76, 230.
Tiy, 107.
Tien (Chinese word for Heaven), 369. Totemism, 96f., 113f., 122; Hamites totemistic, 97; Semites not totemistic, 123, 218f.; possibly survived in Arabia, 217.
Totems: Animal-totems see Animal totems; see also tree-to terns.
Trees, sacred, 127ff.
Triad: Minaean, 204f., Sabaean, 207f.; Qatabanian, 209f.; Abyssinian, 223; first Babylonian, 231, 234; second Babylonian, 247; Aramaean, 317. Tri-literal roots, 18ff.
Tripoli, 151.
Trobriands, 110.
Tuareg, 11,305.
Tuleilat el-Ghassul, 51.
Tunis, 151.
Tut-ankh-amen, 107.
Tyre, 296f.
Ugarit, 45, 46, 287ff., 361.
Umma, 61, 67, 260.
Unis, Egyptian king, 199.
UNUGki, oldest name of Erech, 65.
Upi (Opis), 61.
Upper Egypt, 94, 166, 170£E.
Ur, discoveries at, 41,57; first dynasty of, 39; third dynasty of, 42; Sumerians settle at, 66.
Ur-Nina, king of Lagash, 41, 240ff. Uruazagga, part of Lagash, 64, 252.INDEX OF SUBJECTS
395
URU-DUGki, early Sumerian name of Eridu, 62.
Uruk, 59.
Urukagina, king of Lagash, 41, 23011. Urzage, king of Kish, 230.
Utu, Sumerian sun-god, 243f. UTU-KiB-NUNki, Sumerian name of Sip-par, 61.
UTU-NUNki, early name of Adab, 62. Utu-um-ma, name of Larsa, 68.
Vardhamana, founder of Jainism, 328. Varuna, 44.
Venus, planet, 202, 203, 317.
Vision, mystic, of Moses, 333f.
Vulture, totem, 172.
Wadd, Arabian god, 203, 204ff., 212, 215. Wady Bisha, 215.
Wady Tumilat, 188.
Warka, 58, 65.
Water, spermatozoa of the gods, 139f., 160f,
Wathra, Nabathaean god, 316.
West Semites, 283ff.
Yadud, Phoenician deity, 291f.
Yaghuth, Arabian deity, 215, 219.
Yah, shorter name for Yahweh, 337. Yahu (Yaho) 337; see Yahweh.
Y$hs (Egyptian god), 124.
Yahweh, 88,128,141,147,323ff.; theories of origin, 332; Kenite god, 324, 33If.;
Yah weh—continued: at Tanach, 326; introduced to Israel by Moses, 328ff.; volcanic god, 334f.; meaning of his name, 336f., 369; previous history, 338f.; nature of his covenant yvith Israel, 339f.; implements of his worship, 334f.; how he became god of all Israel, 346f.; how he was moralized, 351f.; how he became the one God, 353f.
Yanbu', Arabian territory, 215.
Ya'uq, Arabian deity, 215, 216.
Yeha, place in Abyssinia, 22 If.
Yemen, 29, 56.
Ymn (Egyptian god), 123.
Ymnw (Egyptian god), 123.
Ymst (Egyptian god), 124.
Ymt-t (goddess of Buto), 124.
Zabul, epithet of Alein, 289.
Zaker, king of Hamath, 314.
Zakro, 53.
Zamama, Babylonian god, 263f.
Zarpanitum, consort of Marduk, 273,313.
Zawan, 61.
Zebulum, tribe of, 87.
Zemzem, sacred well at Mecca, 217.
Zenange, 12.
Zendjirli, same as Sendjirli, 311.
Zeus, 319.
Zimbir (Sippar), 61.
Zohair, Arabian poet, 105.
Zoroaster, 328.
Zu-en, early form of Enzu, 242.
CORRIGENDUM
On p. 365 line 4 instead of “Landsgerger ” read “ Bergstrasser ”A COMPARATIVE TABLE OF THE PERSONAL PRONOUNS IN THE HAMITIC, EGYPTIAN, AND SEMITIC LANGUAGES ARRANGED LINGUISTICALLY AND GEOGRAPHICALLY
A. HAMITIC LANGUAGES
I. BERBER LANGUAGES
		(1) SCHILH			(2) R’edamès				(3) Kabyle				T AME SHE Q				(5) Touareg				II. HAUSA		
		SCHLIH (of Tazerwalt) Personal pronouns absolute	SCHILH Pronominal direct objects (confix)	SCHILH Pronominal direct objects (confix)	Berber dialect of r’edamès Personal pronouns absolute	Berber dialect of r’edamès Personal pronouns governed by a preposition	Berber dialect of r’edames Direct object pronouns	Berber dialect of r’edamès Indirect object pronouns	KABYLE Personal pronouns absolute	KABYLE Suffix pronouns (possessive)	KABYLE Direct object pronouns	KABYLE Indirect object pronouns	TAMACHEK* Personal pronouns absolute	tamachek’ Suffix pronouns (possessive)	T Al* a CHE K* Direct object pronouns	tamachek’ Indirect object pronouns	touareg Personal pronouns absolute	TOUAREG Suffix pronouns (possessive)	TOUAREG Direct object pronouns	TOUAREG Indirect object pronouns	HAUSA Personal pronouns, absolute	HAUSA Suffix pronouns (possessive) [with masc. noun or a plural noun]	HAUSA Suffix pronouns (possessive) [with feminine sg. noun]
1st sg.		nkí, nkín	ikum-ii 'er prügelte mich'	ur-l-i-ikum ur-ij-ikum 'er prügelte mich nicht.'	nech, nechin	âour i, 'chez moi*	i	i	nek, nekki, nek-lrini	ou, iou, 'de moi*	i	ii, i/d moi’	nek, nekkou, nekkouan, nekkouder’	i, in, hin, ni *de moi7	i	i, hi	nek, nekkounan	in, hin (c.)	1	at, hat	ni	-na	-ta
2<	m. f.	kií, kiín kimi, kimfn	ikum-k iküm-kim	ur-k-ikum ur-kim-ikum ur-km-ikum	chek,\, . cheg / C' ehern (f.)	âourek, 'chez toi’ âour im	k, chek, chem	ak am	ketch, ketchi, ketchini kem, kemmi, kpmmini	k, ik, ek, 'de toi* (m.) m, im, am, 'de toi* (f.)	k kem	iak, ak, ‘d toi* (m.) iam, am (f.)	kai, kaiou, kaiouan, kaiouder’ (m.) kem, kemmou, kemmouan, kemmouder’ (f.)	k, ennek (m.) m, ennem (f.)	k, kai (m.) kem, m (f.)	k, ak, hak (m.) m, am, ham (f.)	kî, kaîounan (m.) kem, kemmounan (f.)	nnek (m.) ennem (f.)	kat, kl (m.) kem (f.)	ak (m.) am (f.)	kai, ka (m.) ke, ki (f.)	-n-ka (m.) -n-ki (f.)	-r-ka (m.) -r-ki (f.)
f		ntá, ntän ntät	ikum-t iküm-st iküm-t	ur-t-ikum ur-st-ikum ur-t-ikum	nittou nittat	âour is, 'chez lui* 'chez elle *	t tet	as (c.) *	netsa netsath	s, is, as, (c.)	th ts	ias, as, (c.)	enta, entader,’ (m.) entat (f.)	s, ennit, ennes (c.)	t (m.) tet (f.)	s, as, has (c.)	entra, entader’ (m.) entat (f.)	nit (m.) ennem (f.)	it (m.) tet (f.)	as (c.)	Si (ya) (m.) ita, ta (f.)	-n-sa (m.) -n-ta (f.)	-ta-sa (m.) -ta-ta (f.)
im. 1 pi. f.		nk fin tí p nûkënti	iküm-ag \ . , iküm-nag 1	ur-ag-ikum	nakkenin	âour nâ, âoumih', 'chez nous* (m. andf.)	ner' (c.)	ar', aner’	noukni noukenti	ennar', 'de nous*	ar'	iar', ar* (c.)	nekkenidh (m.) nekkenetidh (f.)	ner’, nener’ (c.)	ner’ (c.)	ner/ aner/ haner/ (c.)	nekenedh (m.) nekkenetèdh (f.)	nener' (c.)	ner* (c.)	aner’ (c.)	mu (c.)	-n-mu (c.)	-r-mu (c.)
2<	m. f.	kúnne kûnëmti	iküm-kun iküm-kunt	ur-kun-ikum ur-kunt-ikum	chekouin chekmetin	âourouin, 'chez vous* (m.) âour kmet, 'chez vous (f.)	koum kmet	aouen akmet	kounoui kounemthi	ennouen, 'de vous* (m.) enkount, 'de vous’ (f.)	koun (m.) kount (f.)	iaoun, aoun (c.)	kaouenidh (m.) kametidh (f.)	nouen, ennouen (m.) enkemet (f.)	koun, kouen, ouen (m.) kemet (f.)	aoun, haoun (in.) akemet, hakemet (f.)	kaounèdh (m.) kanetèdh (f.)	nouen (m.) kemet (f.)	kouen (m.) kemet (f.)	aouen (m.) akemet (f.)	ku (c.)	-n-ku (c.)	-r-ku (c.)
		nétni n^tënti	iküm-tSn iküm-t&nt	ur-tn-ikum ur-tent-ikum	entenin nitentin	âour sen, chez eux âour snet, 'chez elles*	ten, hen tent, het	asen asnet	nitheni nithenti	en sen, d'eux en sent, *d'elles'	then (m.) thent (f.)	iasen, asen (m.) iasent, asent (f.)	entenidh (m.) entenetidh (f.)	nesen (m.) nesenet (f.)	ten (m.) tenet (f.)	asen, hasen (m.) asenet, hasenet (f.)	entenèdh (m.) entenetèdh (f.)	sen (m.) senet (f.)	ten (m.) tenet (f.)	asen (m.) asenet (f.)	su (c.)	-n-su (c.)	-ta-su (c.)
			[ikum = 'er prügelte .']							■													
IH. KUSHITIC LANGUAGES
(1) Low Kushitic Languages																(2) High Kusmnc Languages														
			(a) Bedauye					(6) Soho-Afar		(c) Somali			(d) Gaila			(a) Agua Languages									(3) Sindama			(c) Barka		
			BEDAUYE Personal pronouns absolute	BEDAUYE Object pronouns	BEDAUYE Suffix pronouns with masculine noun ending in a vowel	BEDAUYE Suffix pronouns with masculine noun ending in a consonant	BEDAUYE Suffix pronouns with a feminine noun	SAHO-*AFAR Personal pronouns absolute	SAHO-<AFAR Object pronouns, also possessive	SOMALI Personal pronouns absolute	SOMALI Object pronouns (direct and indirect)	SOMALI Possessive	GALLA Personal pronouns absolute	GALLA Object pronouns	GALLA Possessive	BILIN Personal pronouns absolute	QUARA Personal pronouns absolute	CHAMIR Personal pronouns absolute	CHAMTA Personal pronouns absolute	AWIYA Personal pronouns absolute	AGAUMEDER Personal pronouns absolute	BILIN Pronominal objects; also possessives	CHAMIR Pronominal objects; also possessives	QUARA Pronominal objects; also possessives	KAFA Personal pronouns absolute	DAURO Personal pronouns absolute	GONGA Personal pronouns absolute	BAREA Personal pronouns absolute	BAREA Pronoun objects	KUNAMA Personal pronouns
															After After masculine femmine noun noun															
1st sg.			ani, ani	-heba, -heb, -hîb (m.) -hêbi, -hëb, -hîb (f.)	-yü	-u	-to	anü	yoy, y8, ya, yi	Ana, Ani, an, ani-ga	I	-i	Ani, anA-tü	An-a, na	-kiyä, -tiyä (c.)	an	an	an	ana	ani	an	yi	yi	yi	ta, Ano, Ane	ta	ta	ag	hô, ö	a-bA
			bardk (m.) batük (f.)	-hoka, -hôk (m.) -hôki, -hok (f.)	-yé-ka (m.) -yü-ki (f.)	d-ka (m.) -d-ki (f.)	-td-ka (m.) -td-ki	atd (c.)	koy, kuy, ko, kd (C.)	Ada, Adi, ad, adi-ga (c.)	kü (c.)	-ä (c.)	Ati, sí-tü (c.)	d (c.)	-ke -të (C.)	inti (m.)	ent (m.)	kut (m.)	ketâ (m.) kit (f.)	enti (m.)	ünt (m.)	ku (c.)	ku (c.)	ki (c.)	nitô, nétô, ne (c.)	ne (c.)	ne (c.)	énga (c.)	énga (c.)	e-nâ (c.)
																														
/ .			barás (m. batûs (f.)	-hös (c.)	-yü-is (c.)	-fl-s (c.)	-tQ-s (c.)	uasukd (m.) iss!, Í55I (f.)	kfty, ka, ka, (m.) tay, te, ta (f.)	Q, usA-gak iaa-ga, ucU-ga (m.) ay, iyyA-da, I-da (f.)	a (c.)	-is, -Isa (-Isi, -Xsu) (m.) -ë(f.)	ini, isá-tQ (m.) ïsî, f§î, féí-tü (f.)	isa (m.) Îsî, ÎSï (f.)			nï (m.) nï (f.)	ien, nï (m.) nir (f.)	nu (m.) nine (f.)	m (m.) ñi(f.)	ana (f.)	ni (m.) nir (f.)	ni (m.) nir (f.)	ni (m.) niS (f.)	Arrô (m.) Arre (f.)	i (m.) i (f-)	bi (m.) bi (f.)	tab (c.)	ta (c.)	u-nû (c.)
V	m. f.															niri (f.)														
																														
1 pl.^		m. f.	hanân, hanfn, hinin (c.)	-hôn (c.)	-yü-n (c.)	-u-n (c.)	-tü-n (c.)	namd (c.)	noy, nuy, no, na, (c.)	Ann-a, an, annA-ga (exclusive); inn-a, innA-ga (inclusive)	na (c.)	-yo (exclusive) -enna, -ëna (inclusive)	ûnü, nd-tü (c.)	nu (c.)	këfiâ, teña (c.)	yin (c.)	anan (c.)	yfnne (c.)	ina (c.)	end (c.)	anu (c.)	yinâ (c.)	yina (c.)	an A (c.)	no, no-Si (c.)	nu (c.)	no (c.)	hAyya (c.)	ha, hë (c.)	A-më (m.) kï-më (f.)
£			barâk, baràkna (m.) batik, batikna (f.)	-hôkna (c.)	yû-kn-a (c.)	-d-kn-a (c.)	-td-kn-a (c.)	átin, issîn, (c.)	sin (c.)	Aydin, Adin, ¿din, idin, adin-ka	idin (c.)	-ina (c.)	isin, îsin-tü (c.)	Îsin-ï, isin (c.)	kësânl, -tësânl (c.)	Latin (c.)	entan (c)	kiitentay (c.)	ketôu (c.)	entuyü (c.)	antu (c.)	in ta (c.)	kutâ (c.)	entA	itô-si (c.)	inta (c.)	itoc (c.)	engana (c.)	éngana, énga (C.)	ë-më (c.)
3{r			baras, barâsna (m.) batus, batâsna (f.)	-hôsna (c.)	-yû-sn-a (c.)	-u-sn-a (c.)	-td-sn-a (c.)	ússün (c.)	tan (c.) [kan (c.) ‘Afar]	ay, iyyA-ga	ü (c.)	-5 (c.)	ïsan, ïsAn-tü (c.)	îsân-ï, isan (c.)		näü (c.)	näy (c.)	näytäy (c.)	nu (c.)	ùâ (c.)	aniña (c.)	nâ	natâ	niyâ	Arrë-nAwô	inta, etu (c.)	bo (c.)	taba (c.)	taba (c.)	Í më (c.)
																														
																														
																														Dual 1. â-më (excl.) 1.	ki-më (incl.) 2.	ê -më 3.	1 -më
		B. EGYPTIAN					C. SEMITIC LANGUAGES																		
							1. SOUTHWEST SEMITIC													n. NORTHWEST SEMITIC				III. EAST SEMITIC	
			I. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN		II. COPTIC		(i)						(2)					(3) Arabic						Akkadian	
							(a) Ge'ez		(6) Amharic	(c) Tigriña		(d) Tigre	(a) South Arabie		(b) Modem South Arabie					JUUUU.W		ARAMAIC			
		EGYPTIAN Independent pronouns	EGYPTIAN Suffix pronouns	EGYPTIAN Dependent pronouns	COPTIC (SAHIDIC) Personal pronouns absolute	COPTIC Pronominal suffixes	GE*EZ Personal pronouns absolute	ge‘ez Pronominal suffixes	AMHARIC Personal pronouns absolute	SOUTH-TIGRAY Personal pronouns absolute	NORTH-TIGRAY Personal pronouns absolute	TIGRE Personal pronouns absolute	MINAEAN Suffix pronouns	SABAEAN Suffix pronouns	MEHRI 1 Perse	1 SOQOTRI 1 >nal pronouns abs<	1 SPAURÌ slute	ARABIC Personal pronouns absolute	ARABIC Suffix pronouns	HEBREW Personal pronouns absolute	HEBREW Suffix pronouns	ARAMAIC Personal pronouns absolute	ARAMAIC Suffix pronouns	AKKADIAN Personal pronouns absolute	AKKADIAN Suffix pronouns
1st sg.		ink	» -l	i Wl	aNOK	i	’ana	-ia, with verb -nî	énie	Ane	Ana	'anä			ho, hu	ho	he	'anä	-ia,-ï; with verb, -ni	'änökl, **nî	-ï; with verb, -ni	'•nâ (Syriac ’enä)	-I; with verb, -ni	'anàku	-ia; with verb, -ni
J	[m.	ntk (m.)	~k (m.)	tw (m.) later, tw	NTOK (m.)	K(m.)	'anta (m.)	-ka (m.)	Anta, ant (m.)	Atta (m.)	nésefiâ (m.)	'anti (m.)			hêt (m.)	het (m.)	het (m.)	'anta (m.)	-ka (m^-	*attä (m.)	-kä (m.)	’atta (Syr. 'att) (m.)	-k (m.)	'atta (m.)	-ka, -ku (m.)
2\	k	ntt, (f.) later ntt	-t (f.) later -t	tn (f.) later tn	NTO (f.)	- or e (f.)	’anti (f.)	-ki (q	And, anc (f.)	atti (f.)	nésebï	’enti (f.)			hit (f.)	hit (f.)	hit (f.)	’anti (f.)	-ki (f.)	('atti), 'att (f.)	-k(i) (f.)	’att (f.)	-k (f.)	'atti (f.)	-ki (f.)
3i	¡r	ntf (m.) nts (f.)	-f (m.) -s (f.)	sw, sw (m.) sy, sy (f.) St, st (f.)	ntoF (m.) NTOC (f.)	F (m.) c (f.)	ue’etü (m.) ie’etl (f.)	-hü, -ü, -ö (m.) -hä, -ä, (f.)	érsü, éssü (m.) érswâ, éssüâ (f.)	ûssü (m.) Assua (f.)	nesu (m.) nesâ (f.)	tutù (m.) fietá (f.)	-sû (m.) -sâ (f.)	-hû (m.) -hâ (f.)	he, hi (m.) se, si (f.)	yhe (m.) se (f.)	àe (m.) se (f.)	huua (m.) hiia (f.)	-hu (m.) -hâ (f.)	hü (m.) hi(f.)	-hu, -u, -ö (m.) -hä, -h (f.)	hü (m.) hi (f.)	-u, -hi, -eh (m.) -h (f.)	5ù (m.) Si (f.)	-Su, -5 (m.) -5a; with verb, 5i, g (i.)
h îpi. f.		inn (c.)	-n (c.)	n (c.)	aNON (c.)	N (c.)	nefina (c.)	-na (c.)	éna (c.)	náhena (c.)	néfinâ	fienná (c.)			nahâ (c.)	fian (c.)	nfia (c.)	nafinu (c.)	-nâ (c.)	nafinü, '•nafinü (c.)	-nü (c.)	’*nafinä (Syr. ’anafinan) fi*nan (c.)	-na, -n (c.)	nini, anlnl (c.)	-ni, -nu; with verb, -na§I, -naiu (c.)
2-	m. f.	nttn (c.) later, nttn	tn (c.) later, -tn	tn, later tn (c.)	ÄTWTN (C.)	TÑ (c.)	’antémmü (m.) ’antén (f.)	-kemmü (m.) -ken (f.)	ellänta, ennänta (c.)	esAthum (c.)	nésefiüm (m.) nésejjen (f.)	'entdm (m.) ’entén (f.)			tëm (m.) tën (f.)	tin (m.) ten (f.)	etum (m.) etén (f.)	’antum(ü) (m.) 'antunna (f.)	-kum(ü) (m.) -kunna (f.)	'attëm, (m) attën, attënâ (f.)	-këm (m.) -kën (f.)	’atton (m.) 'attën (f.)	-kom (Syr. -kon) (m.) -ken (f.)	attunu (m.) (attina) (f.)	-kun(u); with verb, -kunugu, -kunugi (m.) -kina; with verb, kinagi (f.)
	m. f.	ntsn (c.)	-sn (c.) -w (c.)	sn, sn (c.)	ntooT	oT (c.)	’emdntu (ue’etömü) (m.) 'emintü (ue'etön) (f.)	-ômü, -hômü (m.) -on, -hôn (f.)	ersâcaü (c.)	ensAthum (c.)	nesom (m.) nesAn (f.)	fietom (m.) fietán (f.)	-sumû (m.) -sunâ (f.)	-humû (m.) -hunâ (f.)	hëm (m.) sën (f.)	yhen (m.) sen (f.)	èum (m.) sen (f.)	hum(ü) (m.) hunna (f.)	-hum(ü) (m.) -hunna (f.)	hëmmâ, hëm (m.) hën, henna (f.)	-hëm, -m. (m.) -hën, n (f.)	himmö(n) (Syr. hennön) (m.) hennën (f.)	-hom (Syr. -hon) -hen (f.)	sun(u) (m.) sina (f.)	-sunu, -Sun, -gunuti; with verb, -gunu, -gunuti, -gunutu, -gunugi (m.) -gin(a); with verb, -gina(ti), -ginatu, -ginAgi.
			Dual 1.	-ny (c.) 2.	-tny (c.) 3.	-sny (c.)																						A COMPARATIVE TABLE OF THE VERB FORMS IN THE HAMITIC, EGYPTIAN, AND SEMITIC LANGUAGES—ARRANGED LINGUISTICALLY AND GEOGRAPHICALLY
A. HAMITIC LANGUAGES
	I. BERBER LANGUAGES												II. HAUSA						III. KUSHITIC LANGUAGES										
	(1) Schuh		(2) R’edamès		(3) Kabyie		(4) Tamesheq		(5) Touareg				(1) Hausa		(2) Kano		(3) Sokoto		(1) Low Kushitic Languages										
																			(a) Bedauye			(b) Irob-Saho				(c) Samali {Dschäbärti) 1 (d) Galla			
	SCHUH Fiens	SCHUH Positive factum	Berber dialect of r*edam&s Preterit	Berber dialect of r’edamés Future	KABYLE mode unique = Aorist	KABYLE Future	TAMACHEK* ; mode unique = Aorist	TAMACHEK* Future	TOUAREG Present (Aorist)	TOUAREG Future	TOURAEG Present	TOUARAEG Future	HAUSA Present	HAUSA Perfect	KANO Present	KANO Perfect	SOKOTO Present	SOKOTO Perfect	BEDAUYE Present	BEDAUYE Present	BEDAUYE Perfect	IROB-SAHO Present Class I	□LOB-SAHO	IROB-SAHO Present Class n	IROB-SAHO Perfect Class II	SOMALI (dschäbärti) Present	SOMALI (dschäbärti) Present	GALLA Present	.GALLA U-mood = Cohortative & Jussive
Hr	iiimmfrn lámmEn	iùmmën tûmmën	i etkel, itkel t etkel	ad itkel at etkel	iourar th ourar	ad* i ourar at ourar	ila tela	ad id attd	immenked temmenked	edimenked ettemenked	igla tegla	adigd ettegel	yá na so (m.) tá na so (f.)	yá so (m) tá so (f.)	yá ke so (m.) tá ke so (f.)	yá so (m.) tá so (f.)	Si ka so (m.) tá ka so (f.)	SÍ so (m.) tá so (f.)	e-n-dir (m.) te-n-dir (f.)	yf-ni (I-ni) (m.) ti-ni (té-ni) (f.)	y-an (m.) t-an (f.)	yá-ba (c.)	yo-ba (c.)	âb-S (c.)	äb-a (c.)	yan (m.) tan (f.)	ya-háy (m.) ta-háy (f.)	him-fi (m.) hlm-ti (f.)	him-u (m.) hlm-tu (f.)
Hr	tâmmënl (c.)	tûmmënt (c.)	t etkel ed, tetkel et (m.)	et etkel ed (c.)	th ourar edh (c.)	at ourar edh (c.)	telid (c.)	attded (c.)	temmenkeded (c.)	ettemmenkeded (c.)	tegelid (c.)	ettegeled	ká na so (m.) ki na so (f.)	ká so (m.) kin so (f.)	ká ke so (m.) kí ke so (f.)	ká so (m.) kí so (f.)	ká ka so (m.) ki kaso (f.)	ká so (m) kf so (f.)	té-n-dír-a (m.) té-n-dir-i (f.)	te-niy-a (të-na) (m.) te-niy-i (të-ni) (f.)	t-an-a (m.) t-àn-i (tay) (f.)	tá-ba (c.)	to-ba (c.)	ib-tfi (c.)	äb-ta (c.)	tan (c.)	ta-háy (c.)	him-tfi (c.)	hlm-tu (c.)
1		(itmnfaag	etkel 4	ad etkel &	ourar er*	ad* ourar er*	dir*	adder*	menkeder'	idemmenkeder'	egelir*	idegeler*	i na so	ná so	ná ke so [na < an-a]	ná so	ni ka so [ni < an-i]	ní so	a-n-dír	a-'ani ('ani)	a-'an, ’an	ä-ba	o-ba	áb-fi	áb-a	an	a-háy	him-fi ‘I narrate’	hîm-u.
Hr	fimmënent	ùmmënen ùmmënent	etkel en etkel net	ad etkel en ad etkel net	ourar en ourar ent	ad* ourar en ad* ourar ent	elan elanet	ad eien ad elenet	emmenkeden emmenkedent	ademenkeden ademenkedent	egelan egelant	adagelin adagelint	sú na so (c.)	sún so (c.)	sú ke so (c.)	sú ka so (c.)	sú ka so (c.)	sún ka so (c.)	e-dir-na (c.)	ye-n-na (ë-n) (c.)	yan-na (y-àn) (c.)	yá-b-ín (c.)	yo-b-ín (c.)	äb-än (c.)	ftb-an (c.)	yanán (c.)	ya-hën (c.)	him-fin (i), hlm-an (i) (c.)	hlm-anu (c.)
Hr	ffimmfapTn tâmmënemt	tûmmënem tûmmënemt	t etkel em t etkel met	at etkel em at etkel met	th ourar em th ourar emth	at ourar em at ourar emth	tf>1axn telamet	attelem attdemet	fpmmpnkpdpm	ettemenkedem	tegelam	ettagelim	ku na so (c.)	kún so (c.)	kú ke so (c.)	kú ka so (c.)	kú ka so (c.)	kún ka so (c.)	te-dir-na (c.)	te-n-na (të-n) (c.)	t-an-na (t-ân) (c.)	tfi-b-fn (c.)	tó-b-in (c.)	äb-tÄm (c.)	fib-tan (c.)	tanin (c.)	ta-hën (c.)	him-tan (i) (c.)	him-tanu (c.)
																													
1	nRmmfa	nûmmën	n etkel	an etkel	n ourar	an n ourar	nela	annel	lìfimmPTìlrfij	ennemenked	negla	ennegel	mú na so (c.)	mún so (c.)	mú ke so (c.)	mú ka so (c.)	mú ka so (c.)	mún ka so (c.)	në-dir	né-ni (në-y) (c.)	n-an (c.)	ná-ba	no-ba	äb -nä (c.)	fib-na (c.)	nan	na-háy	him-nfi (c.)	hlm-nu
					ourar, ‘jouer*		d, ‘posséder*		menked, ‘échouer, ne pas réussir*		egd, ‘partir*		so, ‘lieben’						dir, ‘töten*	'an, ‘sein*		ba, ‘hören’		âb, ‘machen*		an, ‘sein’	hay *sein'	Formed by coalescence of root and verb ‘tell, narrate.’ cf. Saho-‘Afar 3. m.-yfi 3. yfin f. -tft 2. -tin 2. -tfi 1. -nfi 1. -ft	Cf. Saho-‘Afar 3. m.-yô 3. -yôn f. -tô 2. -tô 2. -tôn 1. -ô 1. -nô
A. HAMITIC LANGUAGES—Continued
HI. KUSHITIC LANGUAGES—Continued
B. EGYPTIAN
C. SEMITIC LANGUAGES
I. SOUTH-WEST SEMITIC
	(2) High Kushitic Languages						L ANCIENT		n. corne		(î)				(2)								(2) Aramaic						
	(a) Agau Languages						EGYPTIAN j						/i\ i				(b) Modern South Arabic		(3) Arabic		(1) Hebrew							Akkadian	
	(a) Bilin		<ß) Chamir		(y) Quara						\l*J U«	f es	(W Ai	nharic	w South Arabic		(a) Mehri	(ß) SoqoÇri					} W Biblical Aramaic		(o) Syriac				
	bilin Present	BILIN Perfect	CHAMIR Present	rUÀMTB Perfect	QUARA Present	QUARA Perfect	EGYPTIAN 5dm.f form	COPTIC Perfectum I	COPTIC Praesens I	COPTIC Praesens II	ge’ez Perfect	ge‘ez Imperfect	AMHARIC Perfect (simple)	AMHARIC Imperfect (simple)	SOUTH ARABIC Perfect	SOUTH ARABIC Imperfect	MEHRT Augmented Indicative	SOQOTRJ Augmented Indicative	ARABIC Perfect	ARABIC Imperfect	HEBREW Perfect	HEBREW Imperfect	BIBLICAL ARAMAIC Perfect	BIBLICAL ARAMAIC Imperfect	SYRIAC Perfect	SYRIAC Imperfect	AKKADIAN Present	AKKADIAN Preterit	AKKADIAN Peranmsive
JT	wis-a-kü (m.)	wis-e-bü (m.)	wáz-a-kü (m.)	waz-ü (m.)	wfis-á-kú (m.)	wis-Ü (m.)	sdm.f (m.)	aF (m.)	F- (m.)	«F (m.)	qätälä (m.)	iëqâtël (m.)	nàggara (m.)	Inig*r (m.)	qäbälä (nt.)	iäffälä (m.)	yi-sáfir-en (m.)	i-hósib-in (m.)	qátala (m.)	ifiqtülü (m.)	qâtâl (m.)	Uqtol (m.)	k*)Ab (m.)	ilktilb (m.)	qnäl (m.)	n"qÇôl (m.)		ü?	 ikaâad (m£	ik£ud (m.)	kaâid (m.)
U	wâs-à-tl (f.)	wfis-tl (f.)	wáz-a-c (f.)	wáz-i-c. (f.)	wfis-á-ti (f.)	wâs-i-tï (f.)	sdm.s (f.)	ac(f.)	c- (f.)	«c(f.)	qätälät (f.)	téqâtêl (f.)	nàggaraë (f.)	tënig'r (f.)	qäbälät (f.)	täf‘älä (f.)	t-sáfir-en	t-bósib-in (f.)	qátalat (f.)	täqtülü (f.)	(f.)	tiqtol (f.)	kq>bät> ((.)	tiktub (f.)	qëtlàj. (f.)	t«qtöl (f.)	takaâad (fj	takSud (f.)	kaädat, kaádát(a) (f.)
Hr	wis-ra-kü (c.)	wis-re-hû (c.)	wáz-ra-kü (c.)	waz-r-ü (c.)	wâs-yà-kü (c.)	wâs-y-ü (c.)	sdm.k (m.) sdm.t (f.)	aK (m.) ap*(f.)	*- (m.) t*-(L)	ck (m.) (f.)	qätälkä (m.) qätälkl (f.)	tëqâtël (m.) tëqàtëÜ ({.)	naggàrh (m.) naggárá (f.)	tënàg®r (m.) tënâgri (f.)			t-sáfir-en (m.) t-síñr-en (f.)	t-hosib-in (m.) t-bosib-in (f.)	qatâltâ (m.) qatâltï (f.)	täqtülü (m.) täqtülinä (f.)	q&tältt (m.) qatâlt© (f.)	tlqtol (m.) tiqtell (f.)	k*bäbtä (m.)	tiktub (m.)	qnalt (m.) q*täit(i) (f.)	tëqÇôl (m.) tëqfla (f.)		t: 		 takaëad (m.) -takaSadî (f .)	takSud (m.) takSudi (f.)	kaSdat(a) (m.) kaädäti (f.)
1	wás-a-kün	wâs-e-gün	wáz-a-kün	waz-un	wàs-à-kü	wfis-ü	sdm.i	al	+-	eî	qätälkü	’ëqâtël	naggàrh"	ënàg®r			a-safir-en	e-búsib-in	qatâltü	■äqtülü	q&tälti	’gqtol	kq>bëb	*«ktab	qHK)>	•ëqtôl	■—			 adaSad ;<	akSud	kaSdfik(u)
Hr	wfis-ána-kü (c.)	wäs-ne-hü (c.)	wáz-ina-kü (c.)	waz-iô-ü (c.)	wfis-à-kûn (c.)	wâs-in-ü (c.)	sdm.sn (c.)	aT (c.)	Ce- (c.)	eT (c.)	qátálü (m.) qätälä (f.)	iëqàtëlü (m.) îëqâtëlâ, (f.)	nàggar« (c.)	ïnâgrû (c.)	qäbälü (m.) qäbälfi (f.)	iäf'älü (m.) iärdänän (f.)	yi-sáñr-em (m.) te-sáfir-en	i-bosib-in (m.) t-básab-n-in (f.)	qâtalü (m.) qatálná (f.)	iäqtülünä (m.) iäqtülnä	qfitelü	ilqfld (m.) tSqtolna (f.)	k*)t&bfl (m.) k*J)äbäh ({.)	iIktebQn (m.) iikt«ban (f.)	q*täl (ü) (m.) q*täl(i) (f.)	nëqtelün (m.) nëqÇelfin (f.)		*	 ikaâadû(ni/Ù) (m.) ikaáadfi (ni) (f.)	ik5udu(ni/u) (m.) ik£udfi(ni) (f.)	kaëdQ(ni) (m.) kaàdâ(ni) (f.)
Hr	wfis-dana-kü (c*)	wfis-den-bÜ (c.)	wàz-rna-kù (c.)	waz—rn-ü (c.)	wâs-yà-kün (c.)	wâs-in-ü (c.)	sdm.tn (c.)	aTeTÑ (c.)	TeTN- (c.)	eTeTÑ (c.)	qâtâlkémmü (m.) qátálkén (f.)	tëqâtëlü (m.) tëq&teia (f.)	naggarfiëëhu (c.)	tënâgrû (c.)			te-sáfir-em (m.) te-sáfir-en (f.)	t-bosib-in (m.) te-básab-n-in (f.)	qatàltum(ü) (m.) qataltünna (f.)	täqtülünä (m.) täqtulnä (f.)	q'tâltém (m.) q'tâltën (f.)	tlqteld (m.) tiqtolnfi (f.)	kebfibtün (m.)	tlktebun (m.)	qe(ältön (m.) q*tälten (f.)	tëqtelûn (m.) tëqtelân	takaâadû (m.) takaâadâ (f.)	takSudu (m.) takSudfi (f.)	kaàdàtunu (m.) [kaSdfitina] (f.)
1	wàs-na-kùn	wis-ne-gùn	wàz-na-kûn	waz-n-ün	wâs-nà-kü	wàs-n-ü	sdm.n	aN	TÑ-	eN	qätälnä	nëqàtël	naggâma	ënn*nàgër			ne-sáfir-en	n-bósib-en	qatâlnfi (c.)	nâqtülû	qfiÇâlnü	nlqtol	k«)>àbnà	nlktub	q*täln	nëqtôl	îiikajSad	nikSud	kaàdâni(-nu)
	wâs, ‘hören’												nagara, ‘speak*			-	sófer — Arabie säfara *reisen*.		Dual 3.m. qâtalfi 3f. qâtalatfi 2. qatáltumfi	Dual 3.m. iäqtülfinl 3i. täqtülänl 2. täqtülänl									
H. NORTH-WEST SEMITIC
IH. EAST SEMITIC